Battlestar Galactica -Bump in the Night
by Panzerbelle
Summary: Original Battlestar Galactica. What happens when Apollo and Starbuck find a wormhole in the dark? Will it lead to salvation for the fleet, or something worse?
1. Chapter 1

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. This is me playing in the dark. No copyright infringement is intended.

**A/N: I like horror movies. I like B-movies. I love old BSG. I hate the new one. The old one was a show that was perhaps a little naive for today's crowd, but I like the way the characters could count on each other. The new one was crap for that. If you watch all the eps back to back, the new writers couldn't keep characterization to save their souls. It was very much a "let's do this, no one will notice" style of writing. Even thier interior ship sets were bad. A Battlestar is a warship. Every space has a dedicated purpose. They're not light and airy, they don't have wasted airspaces designed by Dali. They're bricks on purpose and with a purpose. And who thought of that Transformers Hangar Bay thing? The machinery to run it would have used up most of the ship's interior space anyway. Main power core? Don't need it, just stick that wonky hydraulic control bit in there... But I digress. ****This is a Battlestar Horror movie. I hope you enjoy it. **

**You guys should also know that this is my _other_ project. Right now I'm doing an HP/OUAT crossover too. I've got the first third or so of this written, but feedback counts. When I get to the end of what I have edited, if I don't get some feedback, this one dies. Sorry, but that's how it is. No interest, no story.**

Chapter 1

Apollo's warm laugh bounced off of his canopy.

"Thanks buddy," His helmet's speakers reproduced his best friend's tone of sarcasm perfectly. "It's good to know that I can always count on you."

"I'm sorry, Starbuck," the dark skinned young man couldn't keep the broad smile out of his voice, "but you've got to admit that you brought all this on yourself. Again."

"Some best friend you are," the voice huffed back.

"I think I'm a great best friend," Apollo glanced down to his instrument panel. The sensor screen remained blessedly clear. He blinked back up to the starfield racing by outside his canopy. "You'll notice that I'm not beating you up for two-timing my sister."

"You know it's not..."

"Don't say 'it's not like that'," Apollo shook his head in good natured denial, "because you know it is. You bounce from Athena to Cassiopeia and from Noday to Miriam like a deranged fruit leaper, then you wonder why they get mad when they catch you."

"Yeah, but..."

"You need to start making up your mind, or start exercising some special caution, _buddy_," Apollo interrupted good-naturedly. "Athena's not just a flight controller, she's a full warrior and she might just shoot you, and as for Cassie, she's become a well trained med-tech. You end up in the medical bay and one of these times she might not let you wake up. Or worse, maybe you will wake up and find out that you have to use the turbo-flush sitting down because something you value very highly got amputated."

"That's not funny, Apollo."

The flatness of his friends' tone made him laugh again. Long ingrained habit sent his eyes drifting over the instrument panel again. This time there was something there.

"Starbuck, I'm getting something odd, bearing 300 by 295..."

"Got it," his wingman's voice came back all business. "Readings are weird. I haven't seen anything like this since we hit that magnetic void a yaren ago."

"That's what I thought too, but I'm also getting an energy reading that shouldn't be there. Check your Lambda frequency."

"Lambda? That's ultra, ultra low, buddy."

"Yeah, I know. I've been monitoring it on our last few deep space patrols for Doctor Wilker," Apollo replied. "He thinks the Cylons might try using ULF to communicate with their pursuit ships."

"And the Cylons would use this freq why, exactly?"

"Well, according to Wilker, a lambda signal propagates slower than normal communications, but its range is only limited by the power you put into it; there's no top end and no signal degradation no matter how far it goes. You're either getting it, or you're not." The dark skinned young man looked up over the cockpit combing. There was definitely a dark spot in the starfield below and ahead. "Lambda is almost unjammable, but with our current technology we can't build any small transmitters. The Galactica might be able to cobble something up, but it would take up half of one of the launch bays." He glanced back at the white-skinned fighter flying just above and behind his left shoulder. "Can you confirm that lambda emission?"

"Yeah, sorry. Schoolwork distracted me," Starbuck replied. There was a momentary pause. "Yeah, I confirm the lambda reading, but there's no modulation. It's like a carrier wave with nothing being transmitted across it."

"That's what..."

"Wait a micron," Starbuck's voice cut Apollo off. "Did you see that? There was a blip on the transmission monitor. There. Another one."

"I see it," Apollo nodded. "There's a third. It looks like they're becoming more frequent the closer we get to that void. If the Cylons really are using lambda channel, Galactica needs to know about it."

"Yeah, I'd hate to burn all this fuel for nothing."

"Activate and zero your inertial locator," Apollo ordered, "then we'll go in."

"Zeroed. Lead the way, buddy."

The two Vipers barely had to alter course to aim their noses towards the growing void. Both made their corrections almost simultaneously and a three pronged plume of blue/white flame erupted from the first white ship. Half an instant later similar geysers sprang from the engines of the follower and the pair sped toward the hole in space.

"Why am I the one that always finds these things?" Starbuck probably didn't intend for Apollo to reply.

"You're not," Apollo chuckled, answering anyway. "I am. I just like to bring you along for the ride."

The flight captain checked his instruments again, this time not only to note the readings, but to make sure his flight recorders were all functioning properly. That done, he scanned the starfield one more time. His last glance as the terminator drew close was to check the lambda channel. The blip had turned into a solid signal. The universe chose that exact moment switch itself off.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

His Viper died.

"Frack!" Starbuck shouted as his cockpit went black. He threw a quick eye up to Apollo's Viper. Things didn't look any better up there. His turbo-thrusters were out. Even the normal blue/white glow of military thrust was gone. Apollo's bird was just as dead as his.

"Apollo, do you read me?" Starbuck called. He began flipping switches, running the checklist in his head as he spoke. _'Engine start switches off, check.'_ "Apollo, I've suffered a massive power failure. Everything is offline. Respond." _'Okay. Here we go. Engine start...on.'_

The young lieutenant almost cheered as the familiar sound of pulse generators winding up filled the tiny cabin. His fingers flickered across the controls.

"...Buck, can you read me?" Apollo's voice hissed into his earpieces.

"Got you now, Apollo," Starbuck replied. He looked down at the inertial locator. What he saw wiped the grin from his face. The machine Doctor Wilker had developed after Galactica's first voyage through a magnetic anomaly had deactivated as well. He re-zeroed, hoping that they hadn't drifted too far off course. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. Everything just shut down without warning."

"Same here." Starbuck could easily imagine his best friend's eyes pouring over his instruments, searching for hidden damage. The young man set his eyes on the starfield. No sense both of them being caught off-guard.

"Everything seems to be working now, as far as I can tell. Lambda frequency's showing steady transmission, but I'm not hearing anything."

"Hey Apollo, check out the stars."

Starbuck hadn't been expecting any stars at all. This was supposed to be another magnetic void, but the sky here was filled with pinpricks of light that somehow felt further away than normal stars. Unfortunately, they weren't white or red or blue anymore, they were all varying intensities of green.

"Could we have entered a nebula?" Starbuck asked.

"No. Scanners aren't showing any gases, or particulate debris." There was a pause and when Apollo spoke again he didn't sound happy at all. "Something's wrong. Starbuck, how far out do your long range sensors reach?"

"I'm not sure," Starbuck replied. He flipped a pair of switches. "I'm not reading anything... Hold on." Another switch flip set his LR scanners to auto calibrate. He frowned at the result. "This is impossible, active sensors only reach ten light-microns. I've lost ninety-nine percent of my range. I might as well just use the targeting scanner." He was suddenly very tempted to punch the little screen.

"Mine are behaving the same way. They reach out to ten light-microns, then nothing," Apollo confirmed. "If we were being jammed, there would just be static. These are acting like our emitters are damaged. We're sending and receiving signal, were just getting massive attenuation. Something's absorbing the sensor wave."

Starbuck's eyes nervously raked the weird sky again. This time he played it slow and carefully, sectoring the sky the way his instructors had taught him to search if battle damage somehow wiped out his sensors. Of course, in a very real sense, he didn't have sensors now anyway.

"If this is some kind of new Cylon trick, we have to inform the fleet," Apollo said. "Patrols are going to become crucial."

"Yeah," Starbuck nodded. "Listen, if this is some kind of new secret weapon we need to find out a few things..."

"I think I know what you mean," Apollo said. "You want to test our communications range?"

"Want to?" Starbuck asked. "No. But I think we need to."

The chuckle that came through his headset was almost reassuring. "Agreed."

"I'll head out to one light-micron," Starbuck said. "That way, I'll still be on your scope, even if we can't talk. If I don't hear from you within one centon, I'll come back."

"Keep your eyes peeled. I wouldn't want you to wander into a Cylon attack group."

"Me neither." The young warrior didn't notice his thumb tremble as it rose and pressed the engine control on his joystick.

Viper Two's turbos erupted again, pushing Starbuck back into his seat. His eyes bugged as burning bile rose in his throat.

'_Frack.'_ An angry grimace etched his features as he swallowed._ 'Boomer would have a field day if he found out I'd painted my cockpit.'_ He checked the instruments. Again something was going wrong.

"Apollo, I'm having problems with my thrusters," he announced.

"Yeah. You're slow," Apollo's voice was already starting to sound distant. "I see all three engines lit up. Color's good. No stuttering."

"Yeah, but according to my computer, I'm only doing sixty percent of normal acceleration." He ran the back of his fingers over his mouth. "There's no way the Cylons are doing this."

"Must be a local effect," Apollo replied. "Tha* *akes me fee* *etter."

"I'm starting to get signal degradation at point-six-five light-microns," Starbuck announced.

"**nfirm** *ix-five ligh***crons. Try *eta channel," Apollo said.

"Say again. I didn't catch the channel."

"Beta cha****, I s** *gain *eta Chan****."

"Switching to beta channel." Starbuck flipped a switch.

The com system exploded with noise like nothing the young pilot had ever heard before. There was static, yes, but there was also far more. Intermittent bursts of high frequency noise reminded him of blaster fire. He shivered when he realized there were also voices screaming.

"Apollo, Apollo, do you read?" Starbuck shouted back into the microphone. "I'm going back to alpha channel. I'm going back to alpha channel." He couldn't flip the switch fast enough to kill the terror that suddenly fisted around his heart. "Apollo, do you read?"

"***. Ba** ** **fa." There was a demanding tone to the few half words he could hear. "D* *** hear ****?"

"Yeah, buddy, I hear you. Listen, I'm at point nine light-microns. I'm coming back."

Starbuck rolled his Viper hard over and lined up on the return vector his inertial locator provided. When he was on the beam, he hit the turbos again. Too late he remembered what happened last time. He got a mouthful.

"*tarbu**, do you *o*y?"

"I hear you. Do you hear me?" He grimaced against the vile taste. Nervousness flicked the young man's blue eyes across the dim starfield. Something was wrong here. Bad wrong.

'_FRACK!'_ He jumped, startled by the blare of the contact alarm. There was now a second ship on long range sensors. _'Not good. Not good. Not good.'_

"Got a contact, Apollo." He flipped the little screen over to the library computer. The screen blinked and flickered, laboring to produce an image. It finally sketched out a Viper just like his own. "Are you getting this?"

"Yea*. It* not po**ible. We're the onl* ones on this *ector."

The improving sound of his flight leader's voice was doing worlds to improve Starbuck's confidence. "I know, but there it is. We'll have a visual in five microns."

"I'm comin* to you," Apollo announced. "I want us able to support each other in *ase this is some kind of trick."

"You won't hear me arguing." Starbuck agreed hurriedly.

It was three microns later that Apollo arrived, burning his turbos. Seeing his friend's plumes caused him to check his own fuel gauges. They'd been burning pretty hot on this mission and he did _not_ want to get stuck out here. He looked up just in time to see the fighter flash by.

"Did you see his markings?" Apollo asked.

"Yeah, but I didn't catch any details," Starbuck replied. "Why, what's up?"

"They weren't ours."

"What do you mean they weren't ours?" Starbuck looked out just as the stranger pulled up nearby.

"I mean that whoever that is, they're not from the Galactica."

Starbuck gulped when the machine rolled up into a position in space not too far away. Apollo was right, the markings on that ship weren't from the Galactica nor, from what he could tell, were they from any other squadron he'd ever seen. The fighter was too far away to see inside the cockpit, but one thing was clear, it had been through the wringer. Some kind of artwork was visible through spots of heavy carbon scoring on the fuselage. The damaged dorsal fin was a banner in metal, declaring an unknown heraldry into the eternal night.

"I see what you mean."

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

"He's off my starboard side," Starbuck said. "Can you see him?"

"Yeah," Apollo looked over, but the ship was still far away. "Can you get a good look at him? All I can see is a lot of blast blacking."

"He's been pretty beaten up," the voice returned through the headset. "Part of his dorsal is gone and I can see some support ribs through his port wing. It looks like his port turbo-laser might have exploded and started a plasma fire."

"His capacitors would have blown," the smile trying to sneak onto his face felt foreign. Odd. "He's got to be even luckier than you, Starbuck. Keep an eye on him, I'll set my transmitter for unicom and try to make contact."

"Unicom. Got it," Starbuck replied.

His hand shook a little as he reached for the button. The second he pushed it the commo array would begin receiving whatever was out there. He dreaded hearing the hell of beta channel again.

He cleared his throat and hit the button. There was no wail of energy and death. "This is Captain Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica," he began. "Please state your name and purpose." The instant explosion of noise made him regret it.

"***s *s ***ta** St**b***k," stuttered out of the chaos. A long scream chopped off the next words, but one word hissed clear; "Cylon ***ack ** *nbo***. Le** Ge* **em."

"I'm having trouble receiving you," Apollo announced. "Please repeat your message."

"Apollo, he's moving."

Starbuck was right. The stranger had bleeped his turbos and rolled into position in front of the two fighters. He sat still for just a moment before waggling his ship.

"Well, he's not hostile," Apollo said as he hurriedly flicked his communicators back to their normal tactical channel. "He's given us a perfect firing solution."

"You're going to say that you want to follow him, aren't you?" Starbuck did not sound happy.

"Well, he is waggling," now the chipper tone of his voice tasted out of place. "I've seen you do it before."

"Yeah, but I was flying a Cylon raider and didn't want you to shoot me."

The lead fighter began pulling away and altering his course.

"I want to follow him." Apollo checked his instruments. "He's almost up to full military speed. Let's go." He throttled up.

"Apollo... I don't think we should."

The captain checked his scope. Starbuck was falling behind. "Catch up, Starbuck. That's an order."

As the pair accelerated, Starbuck quickly fell into formation with his element leader, but said nothing more. Apollo didn't try to make contact again. True, he had made a sort of pitiful contact on unicom, but nothing clear. Apollo shifted nervously in his seat. There was something awful about beta channel.

They had been following the stranger for less than five centons when Starbuck finally spoke. "He's pulling ahead."

"Yeah, I see. Apparently whatever is drawing off our energy doesn't affect him," Apollo returned. "He's going full military speed. We're not. The effect just isn't as pronounced when we're not burning our turbos."

"How long are we going to let this guy lead us along?" Apollo could easily hear the discomfort in his wingman's voice. "He could be pulling us into an ambush."

"About ten more centons. By that time we'll be at the edge of turbo range back to normal space," Apollo replied.

"It better be sooner than that, buddy. I rode my turbos pretty hard when we did that radio check, remember?"

"Yeah," Apollo sighed uncomfortably. "I should have remembered." A new contact alarm made him jump. "It may not matter. Something big just popped at the edge of long range sensors."

"Got it. Going to the warbook."

"Our friend just hit his turbos," Apollo shifted in his seat, getting ready for something. Getting ready for anything. "Eyes open, Starbuck."

As the white needle zoomed away on a low arc, Apollo's first instincts were to catch up to the unknown, or to blast him. He did neither. Whoever he was, he didn't seem to be evading, he was just in a hurry to reach the distant mystery shape. Something about the big shadow awoke a cold feeling in his gut.

"Apollo. The warbook just gave me a hit." Starbucks voice was low. Almost fearful. "It's a battlestar."

"That's not..." Apollo's voice failed as the shape began to resolve. "...Possible." In a way they were both right. The shape that finally resolved might have started its existence as a battlestar, but it surely wasn't one anymore.

Flight Captain Apollo had spent all of his adult life as a warrior, most of it aboard the Galactica. Fighters were his life and though he loved their sleekness and speed, something about battlestars had always made him feel safe. Even now, after seeing so many of them on fire, or exploding, the huge solidity of the Galactica still seemed to emanate an aura of almost godlike strength. That illusion died as they approached the wreck ahead.

"By the Lords," he whispered.

Everything about the half shadowed shape spoke of massive disaster. Something unimaginatively powerful had broken her back, leaving was left of her huge engine pod bent off-kilter from the rest of the hull. Her engines were cold. Dark. Dead. She was even drifting at an off angle; nose down at about thirty degrees and listing. Sensors showed the big ship to be moving at a low terminal velocity.

The two vipers were approaching her from low port aft. The thin spear of actinic light that had been their guide was arcing up towards the opposite side hangar bay. There was almost nothing left of the one closest to Apollo and Starbuck. A broad cloud of debris twinkled where the mouth of the hangar should have been, but the huge cigar-shaped structure was missing. The aft-most connecting arm that would attach it to the hull was completely gone, leaving a black, rip-edged rectangle yawning where it had been blown away. The central arm still reached out from the main body of the wreck like an arm without a hand, jutting out without touching anything. Only a tiny bit of the cigar-shaped outer work remained, almost like a tiny section of eggshell held in place by the foremost arm.

"It looks like something hit the fighter bay tylium reserve," the implications of all that power took Apollo's voice away. "It blew the whole deck away."

"There's no power anywhere," Starbuck's voice was a funeral whisper. "No active transponders, nothing to tell us who she was. Even her repeaters are dead."

"There's some radiation," Apollo noted. "Something must have broken containment on one of the main energizers. You can see the open shafts where they ejected the cores."

"Apollo, lets get out of here," Starbuck's tone was as nervous as Apollo felt. "It's a dead ship. Let's report back."

"But where did that viper go?" The captain checked his instruments. As far as his electronics were concerned, there were only two ships living out in the dark; his and Starbucks. "Make sure your battle cameras are active. We'll cruise around her once before we go back. Maybe there's something here the fleet can use."

"Yeah. Right." Starbuck's voice had flattened. "Cameras are on. I'll follow you."

"No. We'll go around from the aft to the fore on opposite sides at the midline, then scissor high-low, come back and link back up on the way out."

"Fine," Starbuck sighed. "I'll go starboard and high. There's more light that way."

"Fair enough, but don't rocket around," Apollo returned. "I don't like it here either, but I want a thorough scan. I mean it."

The two Vipers approached the dead ship from the rear. Apollo felt a little colder somehow, when Starbuck peeled off to begin his circuit.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

The chill of green stars followed both warriors back to their side of the hole. Gone was the banter that normally volleyed back and forth. Apollo spoke only to issue orders, Starbuck only to acknowledge. When they were back within communications range of the fleet, Apollo broke his silence again to make a terse, coded report. When Jolly and Greenbean arrived to relieve them, Apollo ordered them to stay out of the void, but said little more. He was already powering back to the fleet as the new pair acknowledged.

Both Vipers were almost dry when the welcoming shape of home appeared before them. By unspoken agreement, the two warriors had come back as fast as fuel would allow.

"Galactica control, this is Blue One, requesting landing vectors," Apollo said.

"Sending now," Athena's voice was warm and friendly. It made the dark haired man shiver as if he'd been swimming in ice water and someone had just dumped him into a sauna. "Welcome back Apollo."

"We'll need our flight recorders analyzed," the young man replied in a tight voice. "Also, please ask father to attend the debriefing."

"Apollo, is everything alright?" the feeling of concern coming through the speakers was welcome, but somehow not.

The young man in the lead Viper felt a touch of shame and he didn't understand why. "I'm fine," he snapped back, "just get it done, alright lieutenant?"

**A/N: Let me know what you think so far. Interest = updates. Would you like to know more?**


	2. Chapter 2

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended.

**A/N: Here's the second chapter. All of part one is already written, so I'm not taking time away from my other work. At the end of Part One you guys can let me know if you want me to continue. Mind you, I've deliberately done a cliffhanger so...**

**And koryandrs, you're awesome.**

The debriefing had been strained. Difficult. Somehow their feelings regarding the sounds of beta channel had sounded foolish in the bright lights and comforts of the briefing room. Now the two men sat at the back of the officer's lounge, silently nursing their drinks. Neither spoke, not to each other, not to the other warriors who cycled in and out of the low, wide room. They just sat, their eyes tracking across the faces in the crowd, drifting to the dark corners, watching the doorways. The darkness between strange green stars seemed to have settled on their shoulders.

Neither was taken by surprise when a slender young woman in bridge officer blue stepped into the room, but neither were they happy when she strode to their table. Her coloring was dark, like Apollo's; olive skin, ebony hair, chocolate irises. She looked angry.

"So are you going to tell me what this is all about?" Athena pulled a chair out and sat without ceremony.

"What what is all about?" Apollo looked away, unable to hold her eyes.

"You two have been acting strangely since you got back from patrol," Athena replied. Her eyes tracked to Starbuck as he rose and wrestled a cubit from his wallet. It hadn't hit the table before he started walking. "Hey, Starbuck..?"

"Leave him alone," Apollo said. His tone was flat, as if he were giving an order. He caught her widening eyes and repeated in a somewhat softer tone, "let him go."

"What is going on here?" The young woman's voice waffled between anger and concern. "Apollo, this isn't like you. Did Starbuck tell you something?" She started to rise, but her brother's hand caught her forearm. "This is about Cassiopeia, isn't it?"

"It's not Cassiopeia." He held her arm tightly until she regained her seat. When she was back down he took a long pull from his drink.

Her brow furrowed as she rubbed the sensation of her brother's urgent grip from her arm. "Apollo, are you alright? You're starting to scare me.

The man's sudden bark of laughter made Athena jump and summoned the eyes of a few nearby warriors. Apollo quickly covered his mouth with his free fist, but his body kept shaking as if something fought to escape. His eyes flicked up to his sister's. Confused. Frightened.

"My lord, Apollo," the young woman glanced quickly around to see if anyone else was seeing her brother come undone. She slid quickly over to his side, shielding him from any eyes that might still be turned their way. "What's going on?" When her hand fell on his shoulder, she felt him shiver.

The laughter faded, suffocated, only to be replaced with an uncertain panting. He lifted his mug with a shaking hand and downed the rest of his drink in for large gulps. "We need to leave, Athena. Now." He threw a coin on the table and strode hurriedly for the door without looking back.

"Apollo..?" The young woman had to rush to catch up.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

Starbuck stepped into the medical bay as if it was the last place he wanted to be, which on any other day was pretty normal. Cassiopeia glanced up when he entered, shook her head and went back to her reports. Annoyance simmered up from her skin in an invisible wave. He had some nerve to come looking for her so soon after standing her up. Again. She didn't even look up when he strode over and stood in front of her.

"Whatever you've got to say, Starbuck, I'm not interested."

"I... I need to talk to you. Now."

His tone sounded off. Tight. Curiosity pulled her eyes away from her paperwork and she discovered that it wasn't just his tone that was off. The warrior she'd known was gone, replaced by someone pale and hunched. Anxious. The sight of him made her rise and reach out. She gasped when he seized her hand in a hard grip. His skin was clammy and cold.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

As he looked around the bay, his tongue flicked nervously over his lips. "Listen. There's something I need you to do. It's going to sound crazy..." He let her go quickly, as if her flesh had burned him.

Cass' blonde eyebrows rose. At any other time she would have thought this was some kind of goofy pick-up line, but all his boyish charm was gone.

"...Can we go somewhere?" His eyes darted unsteadily over her face. "...And talk. Just talk. I swear."

"Starbuck, are you alright?" She stepped around the desk and felt his brow. He trembled beneath her touch. "You're so pale and cold."

"Yeah, I'm not surprised. Listen, I'll tell you anything you want to know, but not here." He grabbed her hand anxiously, squeezing tightly. "And you can't tell anyone about this. Okay?" He gave her a weird, almost pasted on grin. "I told you it was weird."

"Listen, Starbuck, you're starting to worry me. Are you feeling okay?" She felt his gleaming face with her free hand. Her touch ended with a thumb over the large vein in his throat. "Your heart is hammering."

"Look, can we go? Now?" He looked around again to see if anyone else was in the bay. "I just..._ need_... to be with you for a little while. You know?"

"No. We're not going to..."

"It's not about sex," he interrupted loudly. He damped his voice again instantly "I... I just don't want to be alone right now. I need to go somewhere..." He looked down, somehow ashamed. "...Safe."

Cassiopeia blinked, surprised. In the two yarens she'd known him, she'd seen Starbuck drunk, angry, horny times without number, happy, in pain and even apprehensive, but until today she'd never seen him afraid. Being able to read people, empathizing and understanding their wants and needs had once made her a good socialator. Now it made her a good nurse. In an instant she knew exactly what he needed. She wrapped her arms around him and drew him close. His own arms flew around her, not hugging, but clinging, as if he were afraid of being swept away.

"Starbuck?" Cassie kept her voice soft and warm. "I want you to listen to me, okay?"

He nodded hard, shuddering like a frightened daggit.

"I can't leave until my shift is over, which is in about two centares," she felt him begin to push away, but she held on. "But, _but_ we're going to cheat." She smoothed at his hair as she felt him relax into her again. "I don't want to leave you alone right now, so we're going to pretend that you're not feeling well. That way, if someone comes in, I can tell them I'm examining you. Okay?"

His silent nod worried her even more. The Starbuck she knew would have protested. He hated being in the medical bay and made excuses to stay out even when he was ordered to come. Having him just agree so easily was as strange as having him propose life-union.

"Cass, I don't know what's happening to me," his whisper was tight, tremulous and half an octave too high.

Was he crying? Cassiopeia squeezed him hard and kissed his neck. "Baby, it's okay. I'm not going anywhere. We're going to figure this out."

Starbuck nodded hard again.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

It was past midnight before Cassiopeia had finally gotten away to search for her greatest rival. Athena hadn't been on the main deck, nor had she been in the O-club, though one of the other pilots said they'd had seen her a few centars ago, chasing out after Apollo. Now the blonde med-tech was heading through the heavily constructed corridor that led towards the pilots' quarters. If she didn't find either Athena or her brother within the next few centons, she'd head up to the observation dome above the engine. After that, who knew where they could be?

"Cassiopeia," an unexpected feminine voice called out from behind. "Hey. Wait."

Cass turned to see the slender deck officer striding purposefully towards her. "I need to talk to you," the blonde said.

"I need to talk to you too," Athena nodded. "I don't want to be overheard."

"Me either. Where can we go?"

"I was hoping your quarters," Athena glanced around, looking for passersby.

"No good. Starbuck's there now." The sudden coldness in Athena's eyes was not pleasant. "He's sleeping. I had to give him a sedative. I wanted to..." she looked around. "I wanted to ask you about Apollo."

"He's what I wanted to talk to you about," Athena took the other woman's arm and began to guide her up the corridor. "I left him with Sheba in the observation dome. He's a wreck. Is Starbuck..?"

"The same..." the blonde shook her head at the other woman's darkening expression. "I've never seen him like this. He's acting like he's terrified."

"Apollo too. He's been like this since they got back from their long range reconnaissance patrol. I've never seen him this way. Ever."

Both women quieted as a group of warriors sauntered by, on their way back from the simulator room. Both looked back as they heard the voices fade.

"What happened out there?" Cassiopeia asked. "Starbuck didn't tell me much. Something about voices and dead ships."

"I'm not sure. I mean, I got a lot of the story from Apollo, but nothing that should have affected either of them like this."

"Did they land anywhere? Some alien organism might have infected them somehow..." Cassiopeia began.

"No. They never left their Vipers. They just found a wrecked ship and came back."

"That's all?"

"That's all I'm willing to say here," Athena returned pointedly.

"I know where we need to talk, then" Cass stopped, turned Athena around and began walking the other way.

"Where?"

"Your father's office."

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

The enunciator chimed just as Commander Adama was finishing his dinner. A glance at his desk chrono glowed twenty-three-hundred. Late. Very late for anything not an emergency. A quick swipe from his napkin crossed his lips and he dropped the cloth over his ravaged plate. He rose and keyed the door open, revealing two of his favorite women. Unfortunately, seeing them together like this usually boded ill for a certain young lieutenant.

Cassiopeia spoke first.

"May we speak to you, commander?"

"Certainly." He stood aside and gestured. "Come in, come in."

As the pair entered, the old man could hardly help but notice their barely contained agitation. Things were definitely not looking good for Lieutenant Starbuck.

"It's about Apollo and Starbuck," Athena said, half confirming his suspicion. "Something happened to them on their last patrol. It's making them act strangely."

"I noticed the same thing." Adama nodded. He gestured for them to draw up seats before the desk. "They both seemed rather agitated during their debriefing. I attributed it to the stress of what they saw through the void..."

"What I saw from Starbuck wasn't stress," Cass interrupted.

"I don't understand," Adama said. "Has he told you something?"

"No, but from what Athena says, they're both acting the same way; as though they were terrified," Cassiopeia replied. "Not apprehensive, or even frightened, but literally terrified." She gave Athena a sidelong glance. "As little as I want to say this out loud, Starbuck came to me in the medical bay and..."

"...And?" the old man prompted.

"Well... He burst into tears. He's in my quarters now, sleeping with all the lights on. I had to sedate him to get him to relax at all." The blonde wring her hands, unsure how to proceed. "He didn't want to be left alone. He kept saying that he wanted to feel safe."

"Apollo acted the same way with me," Athena nodded. Some reflex made her lay a hand on the blonde's shoulder. "His reaction wasn't as extreme, but he kept telling me over and over that he was afraid. He was also angry because he didn't understand why."

"Where is Apollo now?" Adama asked.

"I left him in the old stellar observation dome with Sheba. He didn't want to be left alone either, but I wanted to find Cassiopeia to talk about this. Something's very wrong here. We need to try and figure out what could have happened."

"I see." He moved behind his desk and sat heavily. He didn't see, not really, but part of his job was to seem all-knowing. He sighed in a way that suggested he was weighing something thoughtfully. "Did either of them mention hearing voices?"

Athena shook her head as Cassiopeia's eyes widened. "Starbuck did," the blonde said. "He said that they lost contact with each other for a little while and started cycling through communications channels." She looked over at Athena. "He told me that when they switched to the beta channel there were these voices, screaming."

"He said the same thing in his debriefing," Adama nodded. "It's preposterous, I know, but Apollo confirmed it..."

"You've got the support crews examining their flight recorders, don't you?" Athena asked.

"Yes, yes, of course," the old man's gesture was off-handed, automatic. "Apollo also said he received some garbled signals on the lambda channel..." Adama pursed his lips and looked intently to the two women across the desk. "Cassiopeia, Athena, do you think it would be possible to get them to the medical bay?"

"Apollo, definitely. He wants to understand what's wrong as much as we do," the dark haired woman nodded. "This sudden emotional binge has him as worried as he is afraid."

"I can well imagine it would," Adama nodded. "As you know, Apollo requested that I be present at their debriefing, but there was nothing in their report to account for this sort of behavior. I can only imagine that he's concerned that they've finally reached some sort of stress plateau."

"But their stress levels should be decreasing. Apollo and Starbuck haven't been under any more stress than any other pilot," Cass observed. "We haven't seen any Cylons in over six sectares."

"I understand that too," Adama nodded, "but battle stress doesn't necessarily work that way. I've known the bravest of warriors to collapse as soon as they had the time to do so." His old, dark eyes traveled from one woman to another. "I'll need to have Apollo and Starbuck thoroughly examined so that we can determine the cause of this malady." He rested his elbows on his seat and his mouth on his joined fingers for a moment. "Did either of them reveal anything else about the nature of their last patrol?"

Athena's eyes darted to the blonde beside her. "Apollo told me everything. I didn't want to..."

"To tell secrets?" Cassiopeia rolled her eyes, before answering the Commander. "No. Starbuck just kept repeating that he wanted to feel safe." She sighed unhappily.

"You and Doctor Salik are to examine them thoroughly and let me know what you find out. For some reason, I have a feeling that their symptoms are part of a much larger puzzle." He rose, giving the pair a wordless signal that their meeting was over. "How long will it take you to do a comprehensive examination?"

"Two centares for the exam," Cassiopeia said as she rose and stepped towards the hatchway. "Four to interpret the data."

"Do your best, as swiftly as you can," Adama escorted the pair back to his chamber door. He laid a heavy, but supporting hand on his daughter's shoulder. "If Apollo and Starbuck are the fore-runners of some sort of stress related collapse, then the sooner we heed their warning, the better off we are."

"I'll get to the medical bay and start getting the diagnostic equipment ready," Cass said as she preceded Athena out into the corridor. "It's going to be difficult to get a good reading on Starbuck. The drugs in his system will have to be accounted for."

"I'll go find Apollo," Athena nodded.

"Do. Please get started as quickly as possible." He waited until the hatch had cycled closed before letting his frown escape.

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"Athena, wait." The dark haired warrior-woman had taken three paces before her sometime rival caught her elbow and gently pulled her to a stop.

Athena turned and looked uncertainly into Cass' oddly imploring blue eyes.

"Listen Athena, I don't want you to be angry about Starbuck coming to see me," the blonde began uncertainly. "He was just looking for help..."

"Cassiopeia, I'm not angry," she offered a slight smile, "not anymore than normal anyway. This isn't about what's going on between us, this is about two warriors we both care about and whatever it was that they found."

"Truce?" Cassie held her hand out like a peace token.

"Truce," Athena's smile broadened as she shook.

The pair made ten more strides together before the blonde spoke again. "So what did they find out there?"

"I'm not sure I should tell you." Athena sighed. Cassiopeia peered over intently, more sincerely, when she saw the dark brow knit in concern. "Not because of Starbuck, but because of Cain."

"Cain? I don't..."

"As strange as this might sound coming from me, I don't want to upset you," Athena shook her head ironically. "Oddly enough, the military secret was my second consideration."

"Just tell me, please," Cass took a grip on the other woman's forearm, stopping her again. "Did you find the Pegasus? Does Sheba know?"

"I don't know. There were massive instrument failures on both Vipers, and from what I can gather, the battlestar they found is literally a burned out wreck. There was no way they could visually establish its identity." The dark woman put her hand supportively over Cass' pale one. She looked into the other woman's blue eyes sincerely. "There's no reason for anyone to begin supposing one way or the other. I can't begin to tell you how many capitol ships we've lost in the millennial war and from what little I've heard from the techs, this one has been drifting for a long, long time. It could be any ship at all."

"I see what you mean," Cass nodded. She smirked slightly at Athena's supportive gesture. "You know, when we resume hostilities, I think we should avoid firing at each other..."

"And direct them at the one person who has them coming?" Athena's lingering grin faded quickly. "If he can take them."

"Yeah. If he can take them." Cass nodded and they began walking again. "I'll start getting the equipment ready."

"I'll get Apollo down to you at once."

**A/N: My biggest worry is how long it takes to set a stage. Like Fritz Lang, I see this and hear the dialogue, so for me it's not a thing to read, it's happening visually. The shots are really quite short when you see them, it just takes a lot of space to write...**

**Again, review please. Energize me.**


	3. Chapter 3

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. Ever. Period. No copyright infringement is intended, just playin with the toons.

**A/N: Coolness, I'm getting more love from this than I am (except for one person, and you know who you are, awesome one) on my other story. Unfortunately, I promised to finish that one first. That said, reviews and likes and so forth = me working on this. I hope I can set the stage right, so that when things go wrong, you guys go 'whoa'. On with the show.**

Chapter 3

The wide, low briefing room was all but empty, which was unusual for the present situation. There were precisely three pilots in the room; Apollo and Starbuck and they didn't look comfortable at all. They weren't the panting, timid men of two days ago. This time, the pair seemed more embarrassed than anything else. Flight Lieutenant Sheba sat with Apollo. They weren't holding hands, but she'd made a point of making physical contact with her knee against his. After last night, she wanted to make sure he knew someone was there for him.

That wasn't to say that there were no more warriors; Adama had been a fighter pilot in his day, and his daughter Athena was also combat-blooded, but time or aptitude had returned them both to the command and control section of the fugitive fleets' survival effort. Weary Cassiopeia, uniformed as one of the big ships' medical technicians, had made a point of sitting beside the Commander, well away from the discomfited lieutenant, though she looked over at him often. Just in case. There were others in the utilitarian chamber as well, but both of them were doctors. Salik was Galactica's chief medical officer and had been since before the disaster. Doctor Wilker was the fleet's leading cyberneticist. Presiding at the front of the room, before the big glass monitor stood Colonel Tigh. At the Commander's nod, he began the meeting.

"Ladies and gentlemen this is going to be a long one," the ebon skinned man began, "so without further preamble, I will begin." He touched a button on his finger sized controller and summoned up a map of the local stars. There was a flashing green globe down in one corner. "Yesterday a long range reconnaissance patrol conducted by Captain Apollo and Lieutenant Starbuck of blue squadron encountered what can best be described as a spatial anomaly. While it is possible for me to relay the facts of this mission, Commander Adama and I feel that it would simply be better to watch the mission footage."

There is a difference between real time and subjective time. Real time is, of course, what chronographs monitor. It confirms the cycles of the tides and helps make events predictable. Subjective time is what people feel, what they're aware of. It's what makes the good times go to fast and the bad times pass too slowly. The real time of the mission shown on the monitors was fairly short. The subjective time was, for the two afflicted Viper pilots, an eternity. Fortunately for them, the Colonel cut the playback just after the two ships returned to the realm of multicolored stars.

"As most of you know, during a normal debriefing, we would now have a discussion about procedures and options," Tigh surveyed the group as if noting who seemed to be paying the most attention and who was not. "That will not be the case this time. Our previous end of flight briefing confirmed that Captain Apollo and Lieutenant Starbuck performed their duties in the correct and proper manner." He didn't smile when the two men gave a tiny sag of relief. "However, there were so many different occurrences that don't fit into our regulation and practice scenarios, that it was decided that we should continue the discussion of that mission today. We'll now begin with a discussion of the electronic and mechanical failures encountered by our pilots." He gestured to Doctor Wilker.

The small framed man that replaced Colonel Tigh at the front of the room was almost a perfect caricature of a mad scientist. His white lab coat held bits of this and that in various pockets and his hair verged just on this side of wild.

"The first thing that I would like to stress is that the Viper craft flown through the anomaly worked perfectly in all respects, at least according to the rules of our universe." He pressed a button and pulled the video back to the point where the two Vipers crossed into the region of green stars.

"I'm sorry, Doctor Wilker, but your statement implies that the reason Apollo and Starbuck's Vipers malfunctioned was that they somehow entered another universe." Adama's low, calm tone easily cut through the soft murmurs and whispers that were already beginning to rise.

"I believe that's exactly what happened," the white-haired man nodded firmly. "And I also believe that I have the electronic evidence to prove it."

"So buddy," Starbuck whispered, "How does it feel to discover a whole new universe?"

"Great," Apollo replied. His tone implied otherwise.

"Look here, where the Vipers lost power," Wilker pointed at the monitor. "If you'll observe, the mission chronometers indicate that the Vipers didn't lose power simultaneously. Judging from camera footage, we can extrapolate the exact moment both ships translated into the void. Captain Apollo's craft shut down four milli-microns before Lieutenant Starbuck's. As you can see, Captain Apollo's ship completely deactivated just as he passed through the terminator, as did Lieutenant Starbuck's that same interval later."

"But how is that even possible?" Starbuck blurted. "A Viper's electronics are shielded against solar radiation, blaster flares, even old style nukes..."

"Yes, Lieutenant, you're correct," Wilker agreed. "However, all those effects are products of our universe. When your ships crossed over, those shields didn't work. Simply put, your computers couldn't handle the laws of an entirely new reality and stopped functioning." He ran the video forward to the point where the two Vipers regained power. "This reset, here, allowed you to not only recover control of your fighter craft, it allowed your onboard computers to re-sync themselves with an entirely new paradigm."

"You said something about evidence?" Apollo interjected. "This failure could be the product of some random power field."

"In a sense that's exactly what happened, Captain. However, if you look here," the small man keyed up the conversation of the sensors, "both of your ship's sensors malfunctioned in exactly the same fashion, to exactly the same extent and at exactly the same time. Even the best saboteur couldn't achieve such perfect results. Indeed, it would take a very skilled programmer to achieve the same results, a daunting task. When you think about the number of security overrides and safety protocols he or she would have to bypass, there is simply no way a random fluctuation could duplicate these effects so precisely."

"There are mechanical considerations as well." Wilker stepped forward, momentarily eclipsing the screen. "Your ship-board diagnostics showed that your engine power outputs were one thing, but your accelerometers showed something entirely different. These have been checked and rechecked by ground technicians. There is nothing wrong either with your engines of your accelerometers." He turned and moved the footage to the point where Starbuck rocketed away for their radio check. "Your communicators were another item. You were still within short range and yet your signals attenuated. Even your inertial dampeners were affected, which resulted in the nausea you felt when you activated your turbo-thrusters. All of these things together indicate a place where the laws governing energy consumption and even the conservation of momentum aren't exactly the same." He smiled at the looks of bewilderment they were giving him. Wilker almost sketched a little bow as he gestured to the other scientist, "I believe that Doctor Salik has further evidence which will help lend gravity to my theory."

The grizzled, large framed man took the clicker and resumed the briefing with a gravelly voice. "I can't say much about other universes, I'm a medical doctor, not a physicist. What I can tell you is that the apparent psychological changes exhibited by Apollo and Starbuck didn't stem from a mental cause, but a physical one."

"A physical one?" Adama shifted in his seat, piqued. "I thought perhaps battle stress..."

"So did I, at first," Doctor Salik nodded, "but that's before the blood work came back."

"Blood work?" Adama asked.

"Yes," he gestured to the young blonde woman beside the Commander. "If this had all occurred under normal conditions, I would have assumed that it was battle stress and I wouldn't have dug any deeper. However, by the time I'd arrived, Cassie had already begun a series of tests that we normally reserve for viral infection." He favored the tired looking young woman with a brief, uncharacteristic smile. "What her tests revealed was the presence of a series of hormones in the blood that almost never appear together. There was also evidence of inner ear imbalance that we wouldn't have found if you, Commander, hadn't asked for such a comprehensive examination."

"What does all that mean?" Starbuck asked impatiently.

"Well, it took quite a bit of research, but I found out that all of these symptoms have one thing in common; exposure to abnormally dense electromagnetic fields." The older man clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. "That's the only thing that would account for everything happening at once. In a way you two were lucky..."

"Lucky?" Starbuck burst.

"Very lucky, Lieutenant." Salik nodded. "From what I've learned in some particularly old medical texts, prolonged exposure to such dense fields can degrade DNA strands in the human brain. With enough exposure they can even kill you."

"Good thing we got out of there when we did, then" the young man murmured.

"Yes it was." Wilker interrupted. "Fortunately, we're no longer living in the dark ages, modern technology can overcome such challenges."

"Um, wait, that sounds like you're already set up to do it," Starbuck observed.

"Well that's because we are, after a fashion," Wilker returned to his feet as everyone's eyes turned to him. "It shouldn't be hard to put something together in the cybernetics lab that would adequately shield a human being from adverse magnetic fields."

"Personally, I would like to have more information before risking any sort of long term exposure..." Salik began.

"But..." Starbuck stuttered to his feet. "That... that place is just weird. There was all that stuff on beta channel." He looked around nervously. "Apollo, tell him."

"I think what Lieutenant Starbuck is trying to say is that the challenges presented by exploring an alternate universe may outweigh the benefits," Apollo's tone lacked quite a bit of the confidence it normally possessed.

"Unfortunately, we won't know until we investigate exactly what challenges we face," Colonel Tigh returned. He stood and stepped back in front of the monitor. "At this point, this briefing will shift to observations and concerns for future missions. Please be aware that military security restrictions apply."

The Colonel turned to the monitor and fast forwarded to the point where the unknown fighter appeared. The frozen, blurry dart seemed to glow a bilious white/green. "This is one of the reasons we want to investigate. Observe," the man pointed to the monitor, "this ship is obviously a Viper. If there are Vipers over there, there may be spare parts we can trade for."

"Sir..?" Apollo raised his hand.

"Apollo, you know as well as any of us that the fabrication ship cannot produce all the things we need," Adama broke in before Tigh could acknowledge. "Some of our navigational equipment is on its last legs and we've nothing to replace it with. Many of our components use proprietary microcircuitry whose manufacturing processes were lost during the holocaust." Adama leaned around to look his son in the eye, "there's also the fact that we simply don't have all the raw materials we require to produce what we need. In some cases the very machines we use in the fabrication process are beginning to break down."

"Perhaps it's persistent symptoms from the heavy electromagnetic field," Apollo began, "but I don't think we're meant to be there. We didn't evolve for that universe. I think we should leave it alone."

"It's not a question of want," Adama replied sadly. "It's a question of need." He returned his attention to the white-haired scientist. "Doctor Wilker, please give us an idea of what your project will require..."

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After the long briefing, it was time to go for a drink. Starbuck took a deep breath, turned and leaned back against the bar. Somehow everything felt better today. Even the air tasted better now that he wasn't jumping at shadows.

"Hey Starbuck," another pilot walked over, gesturing for a flagon from the barkeeper, "I've got a question."

"Yeah, Bojay, what's that?"

"Well, I was wondering. Everybody considers you a pretty hot pilot..."

'_Oh no, here we go. Just because he came over from the Pegasus...'_ Starbuck pulled a cigar from his jacket with a certain languid arrogance.

"...So why is it that any time there's you're out on deep patrol, you get shot down, or captured, or lost, or just generally have a bad day?"

"It's not a bad day if you can come back every time," Starbuck smiled. "I do."

"Just like a bad cubit," Bojay snarked, to the general laughter of the other pilots.

"Maybe so, but you can bet with the cubit that brings you a return, or the one that loses." It was an effort not to push it further and point out that he was a refugee here. _His_ battlestar was lost in the dark. Starbuck glanced over towards the door just as Cassiopeia walked in. "And on that note, I think I'll go check out a sure thing."

The brown clad young man made his way through the maze of tables and bodies until he reached the blonde med-tech. "Hey Cassie, good to see you."

"Good to see you too," she smiled, pausing on her path. "Are you feeling better?"

"I'm feeling great." He knew his smile was a little too broad, a little too false, but his memory of the gut wrenching fear was still very, very vivid. "So, did you come down to the officer's lounge just to see me, or was there something special you had in mind?"

"Well," she let a teasing forefinger wander down the front of the warrior's tunic, "there was something on my mind."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she smiled broadly as she took a sauntering step by the surprised man, "I was looking for Bojay. He needs to come down to the med bay to get a brainwave scan."

"Good luck with that," he called as the other warriors laughed. "You have to have a brain first."

**A/N: Yeah, this one was a bit short, but I had to set the scenes up a certain way. Don't worry, tomorrow's update will be longer. Be prepared...**


	4. Chapter 4

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: Same, same: I own nothing. They own everything. I'm just playing in their sandbox. Please don't sue me.

**A/N: Cue the sound effects and subtlely apprehensive music...**

Chapter 4

"There it is, right were the projections said it would be," Sheba announced into her helmet mic. "Activate scan packages."

"This is just in and out, right?" Bojay asked, already flipping switches. "Just to the wreck and back."

"You already know the answer," Sheba replied. She chuckled. "Why so nervous? You're starting to sound like a first orbit cadet."

"Something Starbuck showed me," the young man grumped.

"That sounds personal."

"Ha-ha. Seriously, just before preflight Starbuck hooked me up with a clip from his cockpit recorder," Bojay looked nervously at the growing hole ahead of them. "You were in the Commander's briefing, right?"

"You know I was."

"Did they play their whole mission for you, com logs and all?"

"No, but I heard about the beta channel chatter," Sheba checked her instruments. "Is there a point to all this? We're nearing the terminator."

"You know that communications fade at about a light-micron, right?" Bojay said. "That was in our pre-mission briefing, but what wasn't in it was that Apollo tried cycling through the channels, trying to get better reception."

"That's standard operating procedure," Sheba's tone was becoming more and more businesslike.

"Just don't switch to beta channel, okay?" Bojay's tone carried a shiver.

"Lieutenant Bojay, whatever Apollo and Starbuck experienced was heightened by the density of the local magnetic field." Sheba spoke in the firm tones of a combat officer. "Doctor Wilker has modified our helmets to shield us from as much of the effect as possible." She shook her head. "All this was in the briefing. Don't tell me you're afraid of a little radio noise."

"Just don't. Alright?" Bojay sighed and angled his ship after his leader. The hole was just ahead. "I've got a feeling that you'll regret it if you do."

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It was late alpha shift when Starbuck made his way back into the medical bay. As he'd hoped, Cassiopeia was down here doing something with a battery of electronics. He didn't exactly sneak over to her, but she didn't notice him until he was within arms reach. When she turned, she bounced off his chest.

"Starbuck," she smacked his shoulder and gave him a half-hearted frown, "you scared me."

"Yeah, sorry." He let her push herself out of his arms. "Listen, about the other night..."

"Don't worry about it," Cassie said as she headed to a nearby consol. "As far as I'm concerned, you sustained an injury. Everything else was part of the treatment."

"What 'everything else'?" He followed her. "All I remember was going to your quarters..."

"And going to sleep with the lights on," the med–tech smiled sweetly. "I put a sedative in your drink. You looked like you needed it."

"Listen, Cass, I just wanted to say thank you. You have no idea what it was like," he ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know..."

"It wasn't your fault, Starbuck," she turned and laid a gentle hand fell on his shoulder. "You were under the effects of something beyond your experience. I don't think anything less of you because of it. Really."

"I appreciate it," he gave one of those boyish grins she always seemed to find so attractive. "Listen, I was wondering if I could make it up to you."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Well, it'll probably be a few sectons before I get a chance to do what I really want to do..."

"And what would that be?" Cass grinned as she returned to her work.

"Well, taking you to the Rising Star, of course."

"Aha." The blonde typed some information into her console. "You know, I remember the time you took me there before that other long range probe of yours. Do you?" She rolled on, not giving him a chance to answer. "I met Athena in the corridor just after you'd left. _She_ thought she was on a date with you too."

"That was different," he wheedled.

"Starbuck, I am not a triad ball." She keyed a few new datum into the computer and checked the results with projections listed on her hand monitor. "I don't like being bounced around. In fact, I'm very, very tired of it."

"I'm not bouncing you around," Starbuck interjected. "I was just trying to show you how grateful I am."

"Fine. Show me," she stood straight and shrugged off the hands Starbuck placed on her shoulders. "But you have to show _me._ No one else. Not Noday, not Athena. No one. I mean it."

"Fine. That's all I'm asking." He finally managed to return a single hand to one of her upper arms. He dipped his head to peer more deeply into her eyes. "I was thinking a little picnic under the stars, in the observation dome? Maybe a little ambrosia?"

"Not too much," Cassiopeia returned. "I'm not going to let you take advantage of me this time."

"Take advantage? What are you talking about?"

"I'm also tired of feeling like a handy landing bay for your little Viper," she returned seriously. "I mean it. If you want to keep playing games, then maybe you should play them with someone else."

"It's not like that," he took a hurried step to keep up with her as she moved back towards her original computer bank.

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The cybernetics bay was an ordered disaster, as usual. A couple of Cylon centurions were scattered about the place, a head here, sensors there, power pack sharing a shelf with a left arm. There were other parts as well; servo motors for every purpose imaginable, a spool's worth of flex conduit draped over a scatter of tables and racks, the guts of a computer were intertwined with half of an avionics pod from an old Viper. It was Doctor Wilker's toyshop and only he knew what all the goodies were.

Apollo remembered the first time he'd come in here. He'd been trying to help Boxey feel better. Now he was in here to meet with the mad scientist and his father. Something cold slipped down his spine. He shook it off. It had to be some leftover something from the void making him uneasy.

"Ah, Captain Apollo," the white-hared man approached, "Welcome. Commander Adama is already here. Follow me, please."

The trip back into the electronic maze was a short one. Even on a ship the size of the Galactica, space was at a premium. The little office Wilker called home was a smaller cubical that looked like the place where unloved, or unidentifiable bits went to die. There were a trio of mismatched chairs, one of which was already occupied, a desk that was populated with random piles of paper and a wide, black monitor on one wall.

"Now that we're all here, we can get started," Wilker said as he made his way around the much abused desk.

"What is it that's so important?" Apollo asked.

"I've been asking myself the same thing," Adama said. The old man shifted as Apollo took the one free seat. "What is it you've summoned us here for, Doctor Wilker?"

"As you know, I've been looking at the flight recordings to see if there are any hidden designs behind the transmissions you recorded," Wilker took his seat and tapped on the surface of his desk. Across the small room the screen came to life and displayed a single, flat line. "I may have found some."

"Oh yes?" Adama perked.

"This section of the record begins before after Captain Apollo restarted his Viper," Wilker said. "It's just the audio portion, so there will be no visual component."

"We heard all the audio at the first debriefing," Adama said. "Except for the oddities of beta channel, there was nothing unusual."

"I'm afraid that you're incorrect, Commander. There were several things that may have been heard, but not noticed," Wilker said. "You see, humans process most of their information visually. In fact, I'm sure Doctor Salik will be more than happy to confirm that human beings gather up to ninety percent of their information through their eyes."

"So what about this recording?" Apollo asked. The promise of being exposed to the noise of beta channel again was making him nervous.

Wilker blinked and let it go. "Some weeks ago I asked Captain Apollo to monitor lambda channel, as an experiment" he pressed a certain point on his desk and the recording began emitting little burps of sound. "Until the probe two days ago, lambda had been fairly silent, oh there was some stellar noise, backwash from collapsed stars and the like, but until yesterday, there had been no intelligent modulation."

"_Yeah, but I'm also getting an energy reading that shouldn't be there. Check your Lambda frequency."_

"_Lambda? That's ultra, ultra low, buddy."_

"_Yeah, I know. I've been monitoring it on these deep space patrols for a few weeks for Doctor Wilker..."_

"Now at this point, there's nothing intelligible coming through," Wilker adjusted the noise so that the cockpit voices were filtered out. "This, to my mind, is not unusual, not when one considers the signals' point of origin."

"Which was?" Adama asked.

"The other side of the hole." The warrior's voice was low. Strained.

"Exactly. The fact that the wave made it through the rift at all demonstrates the sagacity of my theory," Wilker said. He pressed a few more buttons. "This portion is from after the Viper restart. I've already filtered out any extraneous noise, so you shouldn't have any trouble understanding the transmission."

"There's a definite transmission?" Apollo sat up straighter.

"See, or rather, hear for yourself," Wilker nodded.

The line remained flat only a moment longer. When it began jumping the voice that came through was easy enough to understand.

"Attention, attention. You are within the perimeter of a war-wreckage zone. This area has been declared a class nine hazard by Colonial Operations Command. If you are receiving this message, you are in danger. Turn around, follow your back azimuth out of this region. If you are found within this area, you will be considered hostile and may be fired upon..."

"Wait, I didn't hear any of that when we were there," Apollo jerked to his feet in surprise.

"Actually, you may have." Wilker turned down the volume as the message repeated. "You just didn't know it. As I said, it took some effort to reproduce the signal with this sort of clarity. It would have probably sounded very muffled to you. Even I couldn't gather any words from the signal in its raw state."

Adama sat and said nothing for a long moment, but sat rubbing his fingertips over one of his temples. It was almost as if he were listening to the full broadcast a second time.

"The signal is on an infinite loop. If you've heard it once, you may as well have heard it a thousand times," Wilker paused his playback.

"Father, I've never heard of a class nine hazard," Apollo said.

"Nor would you have," Adama returned. "It's an old delineation that was being phased out while I was still a young pilot." He sighed deeply as he drew upon a store of long unused knowledge. "Buoys were set out in space to guard useless and isolated asteroids where we used to dump hazardous materials, or to warn others away from wreckage that emitted harmful levels of radiation." He frowned and let his gaze track the rills of the vocal recording. "Class nine usually meant a radiation hazard that could immediately cripple sensitive electronics and could conceivably kill even the most shielded crews within hours."

"But we detected no such radiation," Apollo supplied. "Starbuck and I didn't have any problems. We even circled the wreck."

"I know. I appreciate that, believe me," Adama nodded. He looked back to the little man behind the desk. "I'm also very interested in their reference to Colonial Operations Command."

"Yes," Wilker agreed. "It implies that there is still a Colonial government on that side of the anomaly. The obvious problem is that we don't know how long that wreck has been there."

"It's also very interesting that such a transmission exists at all," Adama's thoughtful gaze encompassed the other two men. "Think. It's an uncoded broadcast. The fact it's a warning is also very interesting to me. Who is it warning away? Not Cylons certainly. In fact it displays a complete disregard for our metal adversaries."

"Yes," Apollo smiled for the first time since he came into Wilker's little lab. "A broadcast like that shows that whoever put it out doesn't care whether the Cylons hear or not."

"Exactly," Adama nodded and knocked happily on the desk. "From this, it would seem that the Cylons aren't as great a threat over there as they are here. I would certainly say that merits further exploration, wouldn't you, Captain?"

"There are a few further facets that you should make note of," Wilker announced.

"Further facets?" Adama asked.

"Indeed." Wilker fiddled about with his desk controls.

"Beta channel," Apollo deflated.

"Yes. The beta channel." Doctor Wilker looked over at the two men across the desk. "I've processed that signal in much the same way as I did the one on lambda channel," the white-haired man began. "It was actually a much more difficult task."

"Oh?" Adama looked over.

"Indeed. The second signal seems to be made of layers and layers of transmission all edited together." Wilker stated calmly. He pressed a button and the graph began to judder insanely. "As you can hear," the wild haired man had to raise his voice above the noise, "it's sound upon sound. Some are much louder than others. This was what initially led me to believe that it was manufactured." He pressed another button to mute the hellish racket.

Wilker looked across the table and was forced to bury a smile. He'd never seen Commander Adama slack-jawed with wonder, and yet now, the old man sat looking at the still monitor as though he'd never seen one before. As for Apollo, the young man was pale and rigid. He knew he was no medical doctor, Lords knew Salik pointed out often enough, but it was obvious that the younger man's rictus was a clumsy effort to halt his shivering.

"This signal can be nothing other than manufactured," the wild-haired man continued after a quiet moment's bask. "As you know from your own experiences, a more powerful transmission will drown out a weaker. I haven't been able to separate all the voices in the transmission yet, but so far the computer has identified more than fifty. This..." he gestured his disdain at the monitor, "...this farce had to be artificially created."

"Then how do you explain the effect it's had on me and Starbuck?" Apollo demanded.

"The effect is also artificial," Wilker sat back smugly. "Granted, a great part of its potency probably does lie with the high electromagnetic field of the region, however, there is a harmonic buried in all the noise." He pressed a button to restart the signal, then another to freeze it.

"If you look here," he rose and stepped to the monitor, pointing, "these peaks, here and here, and these valleys here, here and here, these aren't naturally occurring. Their wavelength has nothing to do with the actual sounds present. I believe they result because of a combination of tones that literally create another sound."

"And these harmonics, as you call them, produce a physical effect?" Adama asked.

"They do," Wilker turned and crossed his arms authoritatively. "The combination of sound levels and tones will produce subconscious, even visceral reactions ranging from nausea to acute discomfort. Honestly, this, combined with the effects of a dense electromagnetic field, would create feelings of disquiet, then fear and with enough exposure, pure, unreasoning terror. I can easily imagine long term immersion producing insanity. It's really quite a sophisticated deterrent."

"Could it part of the warning beacon?" Adama frowned, noting the almost gleeful tone the scientist had at discovering something so obviously evil.

"If it is, it's insidious in ways that no normal Colonial officer could imagine." Wilker's tone was still satisfied, almost gloating. "It's a signal whose base carrier is of a frequency designed to produce fear. It would only work on beings with a make-up like our own. Electronic lifeforms, like the Cylons, would be immune by their very nature."

"But how can anyone understand fifty voices all at once?" the older man asked.

"If it's a warning, I understood it perfectly," Apollo said. "As soon as I heard it, I wanted to get away."

"That may be the point of the whole thing," Wilker agreed. "From what I've been able to separate out, each voice is some sort of death transmission. Imagine hearing fifty separate voices of people dying. The conscious human mind couldn't process it all, but the subconscious would be able to." He pursed his lips for a moment, as if he'd realized just how much admiration he was injecting into his observations. "Many of them are warriors, Viper pilots, fighting and being killed. Some are from bridge crews whose ships are under attack, or even on fire. The worst ones are the quiet ones. The ones whose voices are consumed with despair." He stopped again and sniffed dispassionately. "It's really an amazing transmission. One might even call it horribly effective."

Apollo nodded. It was the best, most comforting explanation for what he'd heard out there in the dark. Unfortunately words didn't cover the mood, the fear that the sound had planted in his soul.

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"You know, Starbuck, you're not normally too overjoyed to be near the bridge," Athena smiled wryly at the monitor.

"Yeah well, call this time special interest." He leaned forward, taking the opportunity to slip a hand onto one of the woman's blue-clad shoulders.

"What, you're after Sheba now?" Athena rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Better watch out, she might just shoot you."

"Why does everybody say that?" the young man asked. He straightened back up. "No, I'm not even remotely interested in Sheba..."

"Then why are you asking about her flight?" Athena smirked up at her sometime boyfriend.

"Because she and Bojay are in that hole," Starbuck said impatiently. He looked around to see if he'd captured anyone's attention. "Look, Athena, you weren't there. You didn't see, or hear it all. That place... There's something wrong with it. No one should be in there."

"Apollo told me the same thing," Athena turned her eyes briefly from her monitor. Right now her two-timing quasi-boyfriend looked like a big, scared kid. For a moment she wanted to stand and give him a hug. She crushed the notion quickly enough. "He said he'd never seen a place so wrong."

"How long have they been in there?" Starbuck asked.

"Fifty centons." She glanced back again. If anything the blonde warrior seemed to grow more uncomfortable. "Don't worry, Starbuck. Doctor Wilker modified their helmets and had the techs do some things to their Vipers. It won't be like when you and Apollo went through..."

"Galactica control, this is Probe one, I am under attack," Sheba's voice burst through the speaker. "Five pursuers. I've lost contact with my wingman. Send assistance."

Starbuck didn't wait for instructions. In the blink of an eye, he was speeding for the exit, on his way to hangar bay alpha.

"Colonel Tigh," Athena called up to the command pedestal. "Lieutenant Sheba has returned to our side, she's under attack by five assailants."

"Go to red alert," the older man's voice easily penetrated the low susurrus of operations. "Launch ready fighters." The wide, dais began to rotate towards the long bank of deep space scanners. He looked aside for just a moment. "Omega, get the Commander to the bridge. Athena, focus our scanners on Sheba's coordinates. I want to learn all we can about who, or whatever is chasing her."

"Yes, sir."

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She'd penetrated the terminator just moments ago and performed the fastest restart sequence in the history of the fleet. Unfortunately, that had still slowed her. The bandits should be on top of her any second. She looked down; local scan showed that they were still back there. Closing. Sheba's Viper bucked once more as one of the weird green blaster bolts detonated high, forward and left, probably missing her only because she'd gotten back under power and jinked low.

Her eyes flicked down as her tactical scanner flickered under the effects of the near miss. All of the bandits were now on her side of the hole. The three furthest back showed on the little screen as bright, malicious stars. She blinked at the pair closest to her. They were indistinct, faded somehow.

"Sheba? Boomer. We have you on short range scanners and will be at your position in two centons." The woman's face broke into a broad smile at the confidant sound of the black man's voice. "Be there when we get there."

"Not a problem," Sheba said, forcing her voice calm. She jerked her stick to the side, hopefully rolling out of some unknown badguy's gunsights. "Give me a vector and I'll bring them to you."

"Roger that." Boomer's voice also began to sound stiff. "Bear ten by twenty five relative..."

"Sheba, I'm only picking you up on my sensors," Starbuck's voice broke in. "Where's Bojay?"

"I don't know," the woman replied. She looked down at her screens again. She blinked in surprise. There was nothing behind her. "Boomer, I think they've turned back. I'm heading back in."

"Don't do it, Sheba, not 'till the rest of us get there," he returned.

"I've got to, and you can't follow me. You haven't been shielded," she shot back. Her hard, rolling turn pushed her down into the seat. "You don't know what it's like over there."

"No, but I do," Starbuck announced. She could hear him strain to bury the mounting fear he must have felt. "If you'll..." She missed the rest.

God punched her Viper. The impact smashed her three times around the cockpit before she even realized anything had gone wrong. There was a stench of frying plastic and metal, a taste of blood and an all encompassing disassociation. For the micron left in her world, she felt like a passenger in her own body, trying to figure out words to put to what was going on as her bird screamed and died. Nothing clicked until she saw the flat-spinning nose of another fighter headed right for her face.

'_Viper...'_ She thought the word clearly. Then she couldn't think anything else.

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Warmth. Soft, almost fuzzy warmth filled her veins.

"I'm not comfortable with this Adama," a deep male voice growled. "We shouldn't be waking her for a week."

"We wouldn't be, if there weren't another warrior in danger." The commander's voice made Sheba feel safe again. She tried to open her eyes, but could only make them flutter.

"We're getting a reaction."

Cassie's voice was close to her head. Instinctively, she turned, or tried to. Instantly there was a soft something laid on her forehead. A cloth? A hand? She couldn't tell yet. Sheba's eyes fluttered wider. Her world began to turn into something bright and blurry.

"Sheba?" Cassie spoke again. "Sheba, I need you to try and be calm."

'_That means bad news.'_ The sarcastic thought almost made the brown-haired warrior chuckle. "Wh-where..?"

"You're in the medical bay," Cassie said. She glanced up, first to the worried face of Commander Adama, then to the hard expression of Doctor Salik. Practice may have kept his craggy face immobile, but Cassiopeia knew he was worried too. "Your Viper was hit with a piece of wreckage. You've gotten pretty banged up."

Sheba tried to sit up, but someone else was still driving her body. The best she could get was a little clench from her abdomen. Instantly Cassie put her hands on her shoulders, pushing gently to keep her down.

"Don't move," the blonde commanded. "You're badly injured."

Sheba's eyes flicked up to her friend's concerned face. Everything had an odd red tint. _'Blood in my eyes,'_ she realized. _'Explosive decompression. FRAK, I must have come close to checking out.'_ A sense of horror overwhelmed her when she realized just how near she'd come to dying_._

"Sheba," the commanders voice was a concerned near purr. He drew closer to her healing unit and laid a comforting hand on her arm. "Believe me, we wouldn't be disturbing you if it wasn't necessary. Your fighter was very, very badly damaged. The technicians don't know if they can get your flight recorder to respond. Can you answer some questions?"

'_The flight recorder's wrecked?'_ Pain began to creep into her head as she knit her brows._ 'FRAK!'_ She nodded and coughed weakly. Her voice came out as a whisper.

"I'll try commander."

"We need to know what happened to Lieutenant Bojay."

"I-I don't know." Tears appeared without warning. At first, the still sluggish logical part of her mind tried to tell her that her eyes were draining blood. She slammed them shut to keep it all in. "We got to the wreck. Followed Apollo and Starbuck's original survey path. I made it to the forward section to scissor with Bojay, but there were five Vipers instead. They fired, I returned. I know I hit one. I saw it burst into flame..." Her voice dissolved into a groan. The first sob wracked her body like a seizure.

"Adama," Salik took the larger man's arm and led him a few feet away. "You're not going to get much more and trying is dangerous." He looked up into the older man's dark eyes. "I mean it. Even the little movement she's done so far is endangering her more. We need to let her slip back into unconsciousness so we can get to work saving her life."

Adama took a deep breath, looked over at the silver tube and the young warrior inside. He nodded. "Of course. I think I have all the answers I need." He patted the doctor's forearm. "Do your best, doctor. I lost her father, I don't want to lose her as well."

"You know we will, Adama." Salik nodded. He turned to look over at Cassie. "Discontinue stimulation and prepare the bone fuser."

"Bone fuser? But she's got internal..."

"I know, I know," the older man nodded. He was happy to see that his med tech was obeying quickly, even as she questioned him. "We'll have to go about this in stages. If her body isn't worried about pain, or healing her broken bones, maybe it will be able help us when we look to her internal injuries." He nodded to the Commander as he left the room. "We've got a lot of work to do and we've got to do it in the right order if we're going to save her."


	5. Chapter 5

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: Everything but this particular idea is owned by someone else. Please don't sue me, because as already stated, I own nothing.

**A/N: Reviews! WOOT! Thanks to the folks who have, you're awesome. Geoff, hunting for the bit. If I find it, it's as good as changed.**

Chapter 5

'_The hangar bay looks like a warzone,'_ Athena thought as she approached the rail of the catwalk. She peered over, glancing between the organized chaos below and the man who stood, clinging to the metal handhold as though his life depended on it.

"Apollo?" She called as she approached. A small sun of relief dawned in her chest when she saw that he no longer seemed quite so haunted. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes." He shrugged. "No. I don't know."

"That's the wreckage the recovery shuttle has been working on, isn't it?" She stepped up and wrapped a supportive arm around her big brother's shoulder. At least he didn't shiver beneath her touch.

"It is." He sighed and watched the techs go over the pieces, cataloguing, measuring, comparing, moving bits from here to there. "From what I've heard so far, there's no way any of those birds could have chased Sheba. They've all been dead for a long time."

"But how's that possible? Boomer's scanner record shows them right behind her..."

"Until they broke up not long after passing into our universe," he interrupted.

"Maybe they weren't built to handle the stress of coming over," Athena supplied.

"They shouldn't have just broken apart," the dark haired warrior shook his head. "There was almost no physical turbulence."

"Maybe their power systems couldn't take it and they exploded. Remember the power drain on all your systems? Maybe theirs overloaded and blew out."

Apollo barked a short chuckle. "Maybe."

He looked across the wreckage strewn bay where a small group of techs was working on the badly mauled front fuselage of one of the fighters. There was a medical technician with them, observing as they pulled a flight seat out from the back. The seat was still occupied. There was no quick flurry of activity from the med tech. No emergency. The body went into a plastic bag and was laid on a gurney. One of the bay crew looked up and saw the pair on the catwalk. He waved them down.

"I wonder what he wants." Athena said as they made their way to a nearby ladder.

"Whatever it is, it can't be good."

Apollo went down first and, not waiting for his sister, began to make his way across the carefully subdivided hangar bay. He hated walking among the wreckage like this. Every piece he stepped around made him think of all the warriors who would never return. The euphemism was that they were on 'the last patrol'. The truth was that they were dead.

"Hey Apollo, wait up," Athena called as she skipped around the growing piles to catch up.

Apollo ignored her, concentrating instead on the grim expression of the waiting ground chief. From his expression the news he had was very, very bad.

"What's up, Chief?" Apollo asked as he arrived.

"No offense, Lieutenant," the red clad tech looked cautiously at Athena, "but you might not want to be here."

"I've been around this sort of thing before, Chief Tyrol," Athena replied with a slight chill. "Just get on with it."

"As you say," he shrugged. "Listen, I know this isn't one of our machines, but this is... worrying." He motioned and led the way around the side of the fuselage where a heavy tarp had been draped. "Contrary to what some of the others may believe, I didn't do this to keep prying eyes off of a dead pilot..."

"What did you..." Apollo's voice was cut short as the broad shouldered tech pulled a corner of the sheeting up.

"As you can see, these birds have different markings from ours." He pointed to the numerous small spheroid symbols that looked like skulls super imposed on broad axe-blades. "These are kill markings. My grandfather told me about them when I was a little kid." He looked up and saw where the two warrior's eyes were fixed. He nodded. "Yeah, that's why I covered it up."

There, on the fuselage, partially obliterated by damage and carbon scoring was the lettering 'Capt...tarbuck.'

"That's not possible," Athena breathed.

"Maybe not," Tyrol sighed unhappily, "but here it is."

"Who knows about this?" Apollo's voice was tightly controlled as he reached out to touch the dusty metal.

"Us three. For now." Tyrol said. "I don't know if the guys who did the space recovery paid that kind of attention to what they were hustling into the bay."

"Where are they now?" Apollo asked.

"Still out, picking up debris," the man shrugged. "They'll probably be bringing in some of the thruster units this trip, if the radiation's not too bad. Somehow I don't think it will be."

"What do you mean?" Athena asked, finally tearing her eyes from Starbuck's name.

"When we get wreckage like this, the first thing we do is double check the bone-gnawers readings." The man's lip quirked slightly as he saw the two pilots react to his informal nickname for the rescue and recovery crews. "We check for radiation, booby-traps. Everything. What we found with all this stuff is that they were cold. I mean like years in space cold."

"There should be at least a little solar radiation, shouldn't there?" Athena asked.

"Oh, there was that, but you see, even in the best maintained Viper, burning tylium emits a little radiation," he shook his head at the woman's wide-eyed surprise. "Nothing to worry about. It's exceptionally low level, but very specific. You'd have to fly Vipers all day, every day for about a thousand yarens to pick up the smallest indicators of radiation poisoning." He laid one gloved hand on the filthy white metal. "It doesn't matter about the level though. We're real sensitive to tylium. There was none on this ship. None."

"But if it had pursued Sheba..." Athena looked from the tech to her brother and back.

"There would be signs of tylium radiation, especially near the baffle at the back of the cockpit," Apollo finished uncomfortably.

"There would be, yeah." Tyrol replied. "There wasn't any. I would say this old wreck has been drifting for..." he shrugged, "more than five yarens. That's drifting with no fuel aboard, you realize."

Apollo was about to speak again when the tannoy came to life and Colonel Tigh's voice interrupted them all.

"Captain Apollo, please report to the commander's office immediately." The voice repeated twice more before stopping.

"Keep a lid on this," Apollo told the technician as he turned to leave.

"Someone's going to find out about it soon," Tyrol said. "I can't keep it quiet forever. Someone's going to see."

"There's more to learn here," Athena told her brother, "I'll stay and find out what I can."

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"You wanted to see me..?" Apollo asked as the hatch slipped open.

"We have an emergency," Adama gestured to the empty seat in front of him, "and I need your input."

"Emergency?" He took in the hard, somehow worried expression on his father's face. "It's about the hole, isn't it? About Bojay."

"It is," the old man nodded gravely. "You, Starbuck, Sheba and Bojay are the only ones who have been to the other side." The pause that followed showed his discomfort at what he had to say next. "I've come to you for your advice regarding a rescue mission."

"Because you think Starbuck is still affected somehow?"

"That is a concern, yes," Adama nodded as he rose form his seat, "but it's more because you are a squadron leader _and _you have experience with conditions on the other side." He stepped to the view port and looked out at the stars. "You have the ability to examine this from both sides; the side of a man who may be risking the lives of his friends, and the side of a man who knows that there is an important job to do."

Apollo nodded.

"From the little the technicians have been able to learn from Lieutenant Sheba's flight voice recordings, we know that Doctor Wilker's modifications to our normal flight helmets successfully counteract most of the electromagnetic disorders from the other side," Adama said. He turned to look at his son. The young man sat attentively, without any apparent distress. The old man nodded again, pleased. "Since this situation has arisen, I've had a number of helmets modified, but there aren't enough."

"I'll bet you haven't had anything other than combat helmets done," Apollo bit the tip of his thumb thoughtfully. "There wouldn't have been any reason to this early on."

"You are unfortunately correct..."

"There's another situation you need to be aware of," Apollo looked up towards the man at the window. "It's about the wreckage in Beta Bay."

"Yes?"

"I've just come from there. One of the fighters that pursued Sheba belonged to a Captain Starbuck." The young man watched how the realization hit his father.

"_Captain_ Starbuck?" The older man blinked, his mind racing. After a moment, he sighed in resignation. "If we had the luxury of time, I would gladly devote more to this, this... mystery." The old man's face hardened. "Unfortunately, we don't. We have to get a rescue crew in to recover our pilot as quickly as possible. What I need to know is whether or not unshielded personnel can operate in that environment, and if so, for how long?"

**A/N: Another short one, but the scene is short. Important, but short.**


	6. Chapter 6

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: The excellant and wonderful show Battlestar Galactica is owned by people other than myself. The new one isn't so wonderful. I own neither. This isn't written with infringement in mind. No profit is being drawn. Don't sue me, please.

**A/N: I see how I cut this. Yeah, it's a little clunky, but hopefully it keeps the pace up. I really don't want to pull it out and re-edit two chapters... Cue the creepy music.**

Barely an hour later the wide, low area known as the pilot's briefing room was full. Apollo stood at the front, watching as still more filed in, until every seat was full. There were even a few people leaning against the walls. In a way it was comforting to see so many filling this area. Not that Bojay was more popular than any other warrior, but somehow seeing the faces looking up at him felt right. This is what humans should do when one of them is in danger.

"Attention." Everyone snapped to at Apollo's order. "Take your seats and we'll begin." He waited until the whispers of movement had ceased. "I know that by now you've heard the rumors that we've found a new magnetic void and that there may be other Colonial warriors on the other side. What you've heard is both true and false. What we've found..."

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"Well, that went well," Boomer said as he walked with his friend and captain to the hangar tram. "Somehow, I was expecting something a little different."

"What? You thought I'd be up for medical furlon?" the young captain forced a smile onto his face.

"That too," Boomer nodded. "Seriously though, a whole 'nother universe?"

"Doctor Wilker says it's possible. Apparently it is." Apollo glanced over. "It's not too late to back out now, you know."

"What, and miss the chance to have my brain scrambled by some weird radiation?" Boomer's tone was sarcastically light. "I wouldn't miss it for all the worlds."

Apollo chuckled.

"Seriously though," the lieutenant continued, "I'd feel better if I was on the rescue shuttle and you were flying cover, not the other way around. It's not like either of us are med-techs."

"No. I've already got some experience with... all that goes on over there. I think that if anyone has to deal with Bojay, it should be me." Apollo frowned as the climbed on to the sideless little car.

"You sure you're not still a bit scrambled and feeling guilty somehow?" Boomer mounted up beside his friend. "I mean, you're not even his squadron leader..."

"No," Apollo shook his head. "Not guilty. Just... worried."

The tram ride was short and fast, just as it should have been. Unfortunately for Apollo, who was watching the shadows flicker on the support frames, every instant he moved down the tube towards the hangar deck meant that he was getting closer and closer to going back _there._ When the little silver car stopped, the other warriors got off with their normal hustle, but this time, rather than leading from the front, Apollo found himself following.

He watched four of his friends climb into their Vipers while he jogged into the center of the bay, towards a fat-bellied shuttle. He passed through the up-swung hatch and almost ran into a medical technician that was lashing one last something down. The further he climbed, the more people he saw; another med-tech in case Bojay was seriously injured, ground-techs in case he had to be cut out of his fighter. The last three people he saw were to warriors from red squadron, the few who had had some ground combat experience. Up ahead, in the cockpit, someone with a mop of blonde hair was mostly hidden by the co-pilot's seat.

"Everything ready, Starbuck?" Apollo asked as he climbed into the pilot's seat. A quick flip of switches caused the more massive pulse generators in the shuttle to wind up.

"Yeah. Everything's ready to go. Let's get this over with." Starbucks hands went through the launch sequence as speedily as ever.

"Amen," Apollo nodded. He looked back and watched the crew finish adjustments and hurry to strap in. He flicked a switch. "Galactica control, this is Rescue Shuttle One, requesting launch clearance."

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The two men at the shuttle controls could almost feel the skin of their little ship cool as it passed through the hole. When the instruments died, the people in the back began to mutter. Apollo and Starbuck just went through the re-ignition sequence and lit the ship up again.

"Rescue one calling escort one, Boomer, do you read me?" Apollo's voice sounded a little strained as he adjusted his microphone.

"Got you, Rescue One," Boomer returned. His voice also sounded different somehow, as if he'd just realized that whatever he'd been told in the briefing room fell far short of how strange things really were. "Everybody's accounted for. Inertial locators are re-zeroed."

"Sheba said that she followed our original course to the wreck and repeated our survey pattern. She was halfway through when she got jumped." Apollo scanned the green starfield quickly, looking for the friendly blue fires of Vipers. A small smile slipped out when two of the four fighters took up position in front of the shuttle. "From what the techs could get from Sheba's recorder, Bojay went to the far side of the wreck. We'll start our search there."

"Roger, Rescue One," Boomer confirmed.

Starbuck cleared his throat, signaling that Apollo should mute his mic. "Boomer's starting to feel it."

Apollo glanced back to the crew area. One or two of the people were looking up at the weird stars and looking back and around, their eyes never still.

"So are we."

The trip through the dark was blessedly uneventful, indeed it went just a hair smoother than last time, because the ground crew had managed to lengthen the range of their scanners, if only marginally. Still, the universe outside seemed colder than the one back home and everyone aboard was feeling the chill.

"Got something on long range," Greenbean's voice broke the silence, making Starbuck jump. "It's big."

"It's the wreckage I told you about," Apollo said. He still didn't want to use the word 'battlestar'. They'd see it soon enough. "We'll be circling around aft and heading for the beta hangar bay, just like Bojay did. We'll follow his projected flight path from there."

"We may not have to, Skipper," Jolly broke in. "I'm picking an automated distress beacon from up ahead."

"Are you sure it's one of ours?" Starbuck asked nervously.

"What?" Jolly sounded a little confused, but a moment later her responded. "Yeah. It's a Colonial Viper. Registration is Bojay's."

"It can't be this simple," Starbuck mumbled as he shook his head. "Nothing is over here."

It took a little longer to get to the wreck than Apollo remembered. _'Of course last time we had turbos,'_ he gave a mental shrug. _'No turbos on a shuttle. We're just a big, fat, slow... target.'_ He frowned and glanced over at Starbuck. The blonde was also frowning when he glanced back.

"By the Lords," Greenbean breathed into his microphone.

"That would be the battlestar we told you about," Starbuck supplied. His own eyes tracked up to the misshapen wreckage that was beginning to blot out the sickly stars. He flicked a couple of switches. "My scanner shows Bojay's beacon is coming from inside the bay. Can anyone confirm that?"

"Yeah, got it, Starbuck," Jolly replied quickly. "It's in there." The big man's voice was artificially stiff.

"So what's the plan?" Starbuck asked, his voice almost garishly nonchalant.

"The plan is that we go get him," Apollo looked over seriously. "I wouldn't want to be left here. Would you?"

Starbuck gulped at the thought.

"Hey, Apollo, I thought you said this wreck was dead," Boomer's voice broke through.

"It is," Apollo returned. "No energizers, no air. It's... a complete wreck." He refused to call it _dead_. He had the horrible feeling that saying that might be lying.

"I'm getting a power read here," Boomer returned. "Local. On the hangar deck. Looks like the cryonic filters are on... sort of. There's gravity too. Not much, but enough to keep you from floating."

"That's not possible," Starbuck barked. "Check again."

"I'm getting it too," Greenbean supplied. "Power's low, low, low, but there could be air over there."

"Hey, one of you tech guys," the blonde warrior climbed half out of his seat and turned. "Could the power plant from a Viper power gravity and bay filters?"

"N-no," one of the redsuits replied. "Power phase is different. He'd have to rig up some kind of converter..."

"Yeah thanks," Starbuck flopped back, cutting the man off. He looked nervously to Apollo. "I've got a bad feeling about this, buddy."

"Me too." The darker skinned warrior began adjusting his course and checking the monitors. "Still, if Bojay's in there, we have to go get him."

"I was afraid you'd say that," the blonde warrior mumbled.

"Escort One, we're going into the landing bay, you know what to do," Apollo said.

"Roger that, Rescue One," Boomer's voice was firm. Grim. "We'll be here when you come out."

Apollo didn't look away from the yawning shadow of the hangar bay. "Here we go."

As they drew nearer and nearer Starbuck couldn't get rid of the image of a huge, gaping mouth opening up to swallow him.

**A/N: One of the worries I had when I was cutting this into bite-sized bits was that the bites would be too big. I was also worried about scene divisions and mood. My usual offering is about 20 pages, but the last few have been 9. I'm starting to feel like I'm serializing Flash Gordon on the radio; 15 minute spots with relevant stuff. Hope they're not too short for you.**

**As always, please review.**


	7. Chapter 7

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. Don't sue. I have nothing to take anyway.

**A/N: This would have been up the other day, but I blew my computer up. RANSOMWARE VIRUSES SUCK! It's imbedded so deeply that I can't even do a system restore from the C prompt. Worst case scenario; I'm looking at a full wipe. Possibly. My comp is still dead and the one I'm on now is sort of borrowed, even thought the borrowee doesn't know it. I'm going to quick post the rest of part one (which is this chapter and the next), then I'm done until my comp is fixed, hopefully on Saturday. By that time I'll have some stuff written. The downside for everyone else is that there's no way I'll have this done by Halloween. I had my doubts to start with, but this pretty much puts the nails in.**

**So there ya go. Two more chapters and then the cliff-hanger. Kind of like the old TV show, yes?**

Chapter 7

The interior of the bay looked as bad as the exterior. Flames had blackened floor, walls and ceiling. Struts sagged and cabling hung out of damaged areas like fishing nets anxious to capture the slow moving shuttle. When the little ship's spotlights came on, it all looked worse. Pools of white flowed across the wreckage, giving detail to what the darkness had hidden. The shuttle drifted slowly, following a path already cut through curtains of conduit and wiring.

"There's a Viper," a female voice suddenly announced from the seats in the back.

"Is it Bojay?" Starbuck craned his neck to look.

"No. At least I hope not," the woman replied.

"No," another voice supplied. It was the tech that had answered earlier. "Look at the metal. It was here when the bay was burning."

"It was re-arming," another voice said. "Look at the power cables running up to the gun pod."

"Canopy's down," the first tech pointed out grimly. "Whoever flew it is still in there."

"Alright, everybody sit down," Apollo commanded. "We're not here on a day's learning excursion; we're here to find our pilot, not someone else's." He glanced angrily down at the monitors. "His signal's coming from just up ahead. Start looking to your equipment."

"I think I got something," Starbuck announced a moment later. He pointed out into the dark. "There."

Two beams of white light swiveled across a shroud of wiring. The shadows around and behind were thick, nearly solid sheets of midnight, but something back there gleamed white.

"Yeah. I see it," Apollo nodded. "Alright, people, let's get ready to go," he raised his voice without turning. "We may not have a lot of time. Starbuck help them, I'll get us as close as I can."

The huge, fat shape of the shuttle nosed aside the remains of a hanging conduit as it drifted majestically forward and sat down. Only one of the forward spots reflected from the white skin of the Colonial Viper that hung nose up from a mass of debris. The young captain played the light across the skin, especially at the black hole yawning beneath the open canopy.

"He's not in his bird," Apollo called back to the milling group.

The group at the back was already moving fast, but somehow the dark-haired officer's words made them move even faster. Two of them had almost gotten their vacuum suits all the way on before the hard, rapid plod of his boots on the deck sole summoned their eyes.

"He's not in his bird," Apollo wormed into and through the mass to one of the ship's lockers. "That means he doesn't have a suit either." He grabbed a breathing mask from the now open cabinet and threw it to Starbuck. "Come on, we're wasting time." He pulled his mask on and headed for the outside hatch.

"Apollo, wait," Starbuck grabbed his arm. "This is a dead ship. There shouldn't be any power, remember? What happens if we go out there and the filters fail? Boomer'll have to scoop us out of the sky with a net."

"Bojay's been out here for more than four centars," Apollo palmed the switch that would make the door rise out of the way. "The air hasn't failed him."

"We don't know that..." the young lieutenant began. His friend ignored him and stepped out into the dark. "Of course, now that the hatch his open, it doesn't really matter, does it?" He glanced back at the wide-eyed group. "Well, come on. Let's get this over with."

Starbuck pulled on his mask, took a proffered handlight from one of the techs and stepped out onto the detritus laden flight deck. Even through the plastic smelling vapor the mask put out, he could easily smell smoke, burnt metal and the unforgettable stink of long dead meat. His hand hovered undecided over the butt of his blaster as he paused to take a good look into the surrounding darkness.

Apollo's combat boots made flat, receding thumps across the debris as he hurried towards the dangling fighter. He seemed stark in the harsh, actinic light from the ship's spotlight. Somehow the further he got away, the less real he looked. The shadow he cast seemed to loom and reach.

"Starbuck," Apollo called back, "bring a light. Hurry up."

Starbuck cast a glance back at the small group of faces peering out at him from the island of light and life he had just left. He sighed hard, shook his head and rushed into the midnight after his friend. His light bobbed across the damaged deck, occasionally flickering over the fighter and the man who had climbed up onto one of its wings. Somehow the cleanliness of the Viper made the damage of the hangar bay seem more hideous. The ship itself seemed like a night-flutter trapped in a web. Starbuck paused, flashing the light around, looking for the spider.

"Here," Apollo reached down, "give me the light."

As the light left his hand, Starbuck noticed the way the darkness seemed to settle on his skin. He looked back at the shuttle. The three ground crewmen were already out, coming across the deck together. Hurrying. If he hadn't been so worried, he would have found their jogging lockstep funny.

"He was hurt." Apollo's three hard words pulled Starbuck's attention back. He started to climb up on the wing. "Looks like the panel flexed when he and left an edge. He was bleeding when he climbed out."

Apollo jumped from his position on the fighter's gun just as Starbuck got up. He didn't wait for his wingman to join him as he strode around the back of the fighter and into the dark.

"Hey, Apollo," Starbuck looked to see how far away the two techs were. "Maybe we shouldn't separate." He sighed again and hurried after his friend. "Wait up."

The dark on the back side of the fighter seemed even colder, if that was possible. The light splashed up onto the fuselage, illuminating the trail of blood beneath the cockpit.

"You can see where he came out," Apollo said. He panned the light down onto the deck. Something caught his eye and he picked it up to show to Starbuck. "He started to dress his wound..."

"But why didn't he stay?" Starbuck asked. He looked as far into the dark as the glare from the light would allow. "He should have known we'd be coming."

Apollo played the light out across the deck. "He went this way..," he panned up towards a yawning hatch not far away, "...into the maintenance shops."

"Hold up, buddy," only Starbuck's quick hand on his elbow stopped him from charging out again. "Listen, we have to make a plan. Running around in the dark will just spread us out and get us lost. We don't need that, not here."

Apollo clenched his jaws hard and jerked a nod.

"Come on back, we'll talk to the techs and bring a medic," he glanced over Apollo's shoulder at the gathering darkness. "We'll bring some more lights too. We'll need them."

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

"*ny act*vity out the**, Boo*er?" Apollo's voice crackled in his helmet.

"Nothing out here but drifting wreckage," the lieutenant replied. He looked out at the eerie starfield and at the other Vipers hanging in the darkness with him. "Listen Apollo, I'm picking up some interference on this channel..."

"Do *ot change **annels," the reply was harsh, louder than expected. "It c**ld be ling*ring rad*ation from the ol* engergi*er core, or some*hing in the hull a**oys."

"Apollo, how are you guys doing in there?" Boomer asked. "Your voice is sounding a little rough. Doctor Wilker..."

"I kno* what Doc*or Wilke* says about ex*osure," the voice bit back. "I** gone thr**gh it once b*fore." There was a pause and Apollo began again in a lower voice. "We're g*tting on with th*s a* fast as we c*n. *ojay wasn't at the *iper. We have to search for *im."

"Why didn't he stay with his Viper?"

"** *on't know. We do know that he w*s hurt and went into the *achine sho**. We're going after him now."

"Well, you be careful, Apollo." The pilot's eyes tracked across his instruments, looking for oddities. "We don't know how long it takes for exposure to such a dense EM field to be dangerous."

"Yeah, I know. It's on my m*nd," Apollo returned. "Listen, we** moving out now. *e'll get back as qui** as we can."

"Roger that. I'll check back with you every ten centons."

"Aff*rmative. *en centons. Apollo *ut."


	8. Chapter 8

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT_

DISCLAIMER: Same as always. I loved the show. I own nothing. This is done for recreational purposes (and to keep me awake at work). No copyright infringement intended.

**A/N: This is the last chapter I have ready. If you like it, let me know. Likes = me continuing. (Although I have to tell you, the few reviews I've gotten make me want to keep going.) I _am _still working on my main and the current chapter has been giving me fits. Be aware also, that My main comp is currently deceased and I do most of my stuff on my laptop, which because of the vagaries of modern technology (i.e. the twenty-first century dummy programming) I can't get onto my home network. So it's laptop to thumbie, thumbie to main. Sorries. My life is chaos. Anys, here's the cliffhanger. Let me know what you think and want.**

**(I hope you want more, because I'm not nearly done sticking it to Starbuck. I love the guy, but he's too easy to pick on.)**

Chapter 8

"No, lieutenant. I haven't heard from Captain Apollo for more that twenty centons. He doesn't answer my calls," Sabas made no effort to hide his discomfort as he spoke into the mic. He had to move his head around to see anything clearly through the shuttle's thick glassteel net of wiring hanging down from the hangar ceiling clung to the little ship like a curtain. The two ground techs were out there, the shuttle's spotlights reflected off of their red coveralls making them look somehow flat. "To be honest, I'm getting a little nervous."

"Don't be." Boomer's return sounded appropriately relaxed. "A battlestar's made of heavy structural metals. If there are no repeaters between you and Apollo's group, the signal might not penetrate."

"Then why do we hear each other so clearly?" Something thumped on the outside of the ship. Sabas looked out again. The two techs were still out there, working on the Viper.

"First of all, because a shuttle has a much more powerful transmitter than anything carried by hand," Boomer replied. Sabas could easily imagine the warrior rolling his eyes. "Second, we're on almost a straight line with each other with nothing in between. There's no reason we shouldn't."

The thump came again, this time it was accompanied with a dragging noise. Sabas shivered a little. "Must be the dense electromagnetic field," he mumbled. "It's making me jumpy."

"What was that?"

"Hey, if the transmitter on the shuttle is so much more powerful, why am I not getting a signal from Captain Apollo?"

"There's a difference between transmitting and receiving power," Boomer replied. "Apollo's probably getting your messages, you're just not getting his, because _his_ transmitter's so weak."

The thump came a third time, this time from a different part of the shuttle. It sounded like it came from the cargo bay. The med-tech looked out again. Icarion and Bardas were gone. He sighed, hoping they were fishing some of their gear out of storage.

"Listen, he's still got a lot of time before we need to worry," Boomer said. "He hasn't been out of contact for a full centar yet."

"I know. It's just..." Sabas shook his head. "This place is really, really strange."

Boomer's chuckle was more reassuring than anything he'd said so far. "Well, it'll be over soon. They'll be back with Bojay and you'll all be out before you know it."

"I hope so."

"Count on it. Listen, keep the channel clear, just in case. I'll check with you again in ten centons. Boomer out."

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

"Hey, Boomer?" Jolly's unexpected voice made him jump. Starbuck had been right. These green stars really were creepy. "I'm getting movement in the debris field. Twenty plus forty-five."

Boomer's eyes went to his own short range scanner as Greenbean's voice broke in.

"Activity. Something's moving a little faster than a normal drift. Felgercarb," the young pilot's frown was easy to picture. "It's behind me. Negative sixty-eight by eighty."

"Okay, start closing up. It's about to pop," Boomer announced. "Stringbean, Jolly, form low and orient on our outbound course..."

"HOLY FRAK!" Sabas' voice erupted into his headset. "IT JUST JUMPED ICARION!" the sound of blaster fire began to chirp through the helmet speakers.

"Sabas?" Boomer demanded. "Sabas?" He waited for a second for an answer before commanding his wingman. "Demetra, form on me. We're going high. Weapons free, people. If it's not our shuttle, you are clear to engage."

"We're coming out!" Sabas' panicked voice trembled into the headset. "Some fracking thing jumped on Icarion. Tyche shot it, but there are more! Lots more!."

"Sabas, calm down. More what?" Boomer demanded. "What's your status?"

"We're under attack. They look like people, but they're not..." There was a rustle as the microphone shifted, then Bardas came on. He sounded fearful, but functional.

"We're under attack. There are these... things all over the shuttle." The whine of the ship's big pulse injectors seemed to add a note of desperation to his voice. "They're like crazy people. One of them jumped Icarion while we were working on Bojay's Viper. It... Oh lords, it tore his throat out with its teeth."

"Vipers closing in, boss," Jolly announced. "They're moving up to battle speed. Do you still want us to engage?"

"H-hold on, Bardas," Boomer barked angrily. "Broadcast a challenge on unicom. If they ignore it, blast them out of the sky." He didn't wait for confirmation. "Bardas, Bardas, can you hear me?"

"Boomer, I'm getting movement in the bay," Demetra announced. "The shuttle's moving." Then she exploded.

The flash of the woman's death shocked the warrior for just an instant. His reflex blipped his turbos, shoving him erratically forward. "Ambush, ambush, ambush," He shouted angrily. "Weapons free. I say again weapons free." He chirped the aft end of his Viper and sent a burst of hate-filled orange bolts out towards the first moving target his gunsight lined up on. There was a satisfying flash. "If it moves and it's not ours, kill it."

Boomer's dark hand slammed his throttle forward and he rolled with the rising power, orienting, looking over his canopy combing towards the hangar bay below and behind him. He didn't have time to look long. Fat, green bolts skittered by, jerking his eyes out into the drifting field of dust and debris. He fired back, missing.

"They're Vipers," Jolly sounded surprised. "Boss, those are Vipers shooting at us."

"So shoot back," Boomer ordered. "They just got Demetra."

It was a few short, tense moments as Boomer wheeled after his attacker, fired off a few more volleys and turned back before he had something even vaguely resembling good news.

"I have eyes on the shuttle," Greenbean's voice stuttered as something exploded on his end. "It's coming out in a hurry. Oh f..."

"They're on board!" Bardas shouted into his mic. "Hatch is closed. Tyche's... Frak. Frak! FRAK!" The shuttle's transmission died in static.

"They've clipped the mouth of the hangar," Stringbean announced. "Sec..."

Boomer didn't have a second to wait. Another set of green bolts sizzled past his cockpit. His thumb clamped down on the IM button and he nearly threw up as his fighter slammed into reverse. He lined up and fired, turning his enemy into a rapidly expanding ball of gas and burnt metal.

"They're rolling, but seem to be getting control. No air streaming..." Jolly grunted as something else popped. "Yeah, they're accelerating."

"Clear them a path," Boomer ordered as he wheeled his little ship around. "They're priority one. Get them the frak out of here."

The two other surviving fighter pilots confirmed and began their deadly dance. Time changed. Seconds became hours, life itself measured in instants of reaction time. The future and the past stopped existing. There was just 'now' and now they were fighting to keep the shuttle alive. None of them really believed they'd done it when the shuttle lumbered through the hole into friendlier stars. Greenbean's victorious whoop was cut off as his Viper crossed the terminator and went dark.

Boomer saw the garish enemy bird come in, already setting up to kill the lead Vipers. Neither Stringbean nor Jolly had the time to restart. He didn't have the angle. It didn't stop him from trying.

The enemy fired one bolt. One. Then it exploded. In the distance another Viper appeared, screaming into the dark between the shuttle and the ball of flame that had just been an enemy fighter. It shut down as it crossed over and the enemy's wingman lined up for the kill. Boomer had time to pop that one before he crossed and his fighter switched itself off.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

"Galactica control, this is Rescue Escort One," Boomer's voice was heavy, unhappy in the bridge's speakers. The sound of it made Athena glance up to the high center console where Omega, Colonel Tigh and her father waited.

"W-we read you, escort one," she returned anxiously. "What's your situation?"

"We need a recovery shuttle. The rescue shuttle has been damaged and it's out of communication," Boomer replied. "I'm not seeing any movement inside. Integrity seems good, but it's moving in a straight line. No acceleration, but it is under power. Copy?"

"We here you," Athena lowered her head worriedly. "What is the status of your flight?"

"We were ambushed. I lost Demetra. All other fighters intact." There was a long pause. "I don't know if Starbuck or Apollo are on the shuttle. I only heard Sabas and Bardas. They mentioned Tyche and Icarion. No one else."

Athena looked back again, but Colonel Tigh was already giving orders to ready another recovery shuttle. She caught her father's eye and was about to stand when he shook his head. Until this moment she'd never realized just how old and fragile he looked. From the hard look in his eyes, his fear was hers. She'd just lost another brother. He'd lost another son.

**A/N: I know the last few chapters have been short. I kind of cut them ouot of the main document that way. When I look at them in Word, they look so much longer, honest. (Of course they're double spaced...)**


	9. Chapter 9

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT - PART 2_

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing here but he idea for this episode. I'm just playing in a universe that made me happy a while back. No copyright infringement intended.

**A/N: Well here it is, the first chapter of Part Two. I didn't think it would take quite this long to get ready, but life happened. I caught a virus last week and my comp was down until Saturday. **

**Also, as I stated in the beginning, there's another work I'm engaged in and the chapter I'm working on for that has been a real witch-with-a-B. I've written it and re-written it about six times, and now that I've gotten the part done that was giving me such a headache, a new challenge has arisen. Yay. Rather than face that challenge, I got this done. I also went back and re-read the whole thing to make sure I've gotten back in the mood. Then I saw that it needed a re-edit. That'll be up this weekend. No real changes, just some spelling corrections and some dropped words, that sort of thing, so YOU won't need to re-read it all. (Not having a beta is a bit of a pain.)**

**I've gotten more positive mail from BSG anys, so see? Your reviews make me work. I'm a slave to the fans.**

**On the subject of mail, you guys are AWESOME. I can't tell you how cool it is that you like person has asked that I not make Alternate Universe Starbuck a girl. (I wrote that I love messing with Starbuck, he's too easy.) Not an issue. I didn't have anything against Katee Sackhoff in the new series, but she didn't really trip my trigger. I might have liked her more if the worters of that show could maintain characterization from one episode to the next. Anys, Geoff; don't worry, what I have in store for Lieutanant Starbuck is a little more insideous. And no, nothing falls off.**

**One more thing, I backed up time just a little for continuity with the rescue team. The shuttle hasn't left yet, and for these guys, when it actually does leave is immaterial. I found I needed one more radio communication with them to A) show from _their_ perspective that they couldn't just call Boomer when things go wrong and B) to keep them thinking that the shuttle was just a radio call away. Got to keep the prey calm, you know...**

**Now, done with notes. Cue the music. Let's have some monsters...**

Chapter 1

Apollo looked at the small group clustered around the lantern. Everyone's faces bore expressions ranging from a vague, nauseous discomfort to wide-eyed, sweating fear. He only hoped that he looked more confidant.

"Okay, you know the plan," the captain said. "Icarion, Bardas," he nodded to two of the red clad technicians, "you two try to free Bojay's ship. If it's still flight worthy, one of us will take it out when we get back." His eye flicked to one of his two med-techs. "You, stay on the shuttle and monitor local conditions. I hope we won't need you to, but if we find Bojay and he needs emergency aid, we'll call you and you can set up the lower bay as an emergency treatment unit."

"What about leaving a warrior behind," the med-tech asked. "Four of you are enough to guard two techs and carry your pilot back at the same time."

Apollo bit back a harsh reply. _'It's the environment,'_ he told himself. He took a calming breath and realized that these people needed reassurance almost as much as he did.

"You're right." He jerked his chin to the biggest of the three from Red Squadron. "Wing-sergeant Tyche will stay here with you for security."

He couldn't miss the looks of relief that passed between the four. They were getting to stay near the shuttle. Conversely, the remaining deck crewman and medic did not look happy at all. Starbuck just looked resigned.

"Chira, Sinon and the rest of you are coming with Starbuck and me." He ignored his wingman's uncomfortable sigh. "Check your gear and let's go. I don't want to be here any more than you do and the sooner we get on with this, the sooner we get to leave."

The two technicians shouldered their respective bags as the other warriors activated their handlights. Two more lights clicked on behind him as he looked down at the bloodstain, but the increased illumination did nothing to comfort him. Instead they made the midnight that had pooled around them in the damaged bay cling more closely.

"Chira, what do you think?" Apollo pointed down at the blackening stain. "Is Bojay in danger from his wound?"

The middle-aged woman looked down at the stain briefly before shaking her head. "Not from blood loss," she replied, "not if he bandaged his wound..." The discarded scrap Apollo had picked up earlier caught her eye. She toed the wrapper with her foot, "...which it seems he did." She looked up at the two warriors and shrugged. "He could have had some sort of internal injury that we don't know about. These stains aren't conclusive by any means."

"We should step this up," Starbuck's fingers drummed impatiently on his pistol butt. "Like you said, Apollo, the sooner we find Bojay, the sooner we can go home."

"Let's go," Apollo nodded.

The small group began making their way through the debris, following a thin trail of new, boot shaped smudges that led towards an open hatchway some dozen meters away. The two officers led, lights high, hands nervously clutching the grips of their weapons. Behind them the others followed, quiet and uneasy. The hatchway ahead was impossibly black, almost as though the darkness was a hunger that sucked in and destroyed light, rather than an empty void to be beaten back by it.

"I really don't like this," Starbuck muttered to himself.

They approached the doorway carefully, not as though there were something on the other side, but the way primitives might approach an unknown cave. Apollo went in first. His surprised gasp drew the others in. Starbuck's objection became much louder.

"Holy Frak."

Once upon a time this low roofed chamber had been brightly lit and had contained the machinery necessary to keep the fighters up and flying. Now, however the wreckage inside made the damaged landing bay look almost pristine. Long ago several of the large machines had sheared through their mounting bolts and rolled, or bounced across the bay, smashing through racks of tools and equipment, twisting conduits and stanchions and burning. The vacuum of space had probably killed the flames, but now that air had returned, so had the smells of ash and ozone, burned chemicals and meat. It must have been a slice of hell when the ship had been dying. Now it was a tomb, a forgotten torture chamber, an abattoir abandoned at the height of operations and left in the dark.

Apollo stepped into the nearest empty area that would accommodate him. Starbuck stood just inside the doorway, back to a heavily dented support. When the engineering tech looked around the hatch combing, his eyes grew round.

"Holy frak," he echoed. He stepped into the wreckage, flashing his light high and low as he stork-stepped a little further into the room.

"Stop." Apollo commanded.

"Sorry, it's just that..."

"That's fine," Apollo raised his hand to forestall any more chatter, "but if you keep going you're going to step on a corpse."

The tech' slight flashed down. The flight captain had been right. The yawning, mummified corpse of one of this battlestar's crewmen lay half trapped beneath a flipped wrack of welding tanks and rubbish.

"Oh. Thanks." Sinon answered in a voice too calm.

"Can we get on with this?" Starbuck looked over at his best friend anxiously. "What? This guy's been gone for a while. I'm sorry about his luck, but we're here for Bojay."

"You're right." The other warrior's light flashed around the room hurriedly, lighting on a narrow hole in the wreckage. "There. He went through there."

Starbuck frowned when he saw the jagged opening in the debris. "Apollo? Why in the name of Dis would he go through there?"

"I don't know," Apollo said as he climbed carefully over the tortured metal jetsam, "but look. There's some blood. His trail goes this way."

"Guys, wait up," Sinon said. "Let me look first."

"What?" Starbuck's light whipped around to focus on the tech's face. "Why would..."

"Look at this," Sinon's light stopped on a sheared off thumb of alloy. "See that? It's a mooring bolt. These machines weren't meant to move under battle conditions, but they're flipped around here like empty ale-cans. The ones on the Galactica didn't snap even after the hangar bay was rammed by Cylons. You guys may be pogey-blasting fiends in a Viper, but this is what I do."

"So caused did all this?" Starbuck demanded.

The tech began to climb carefully over the debris to join Apollo near the opening. "My guess is that when the port side tylium reserve detonated, it broke this ship's back and did all this as well."

"Could one explosion do that?" Starbuck asked.

"Depends on a lot of factors," the tech peered through carefully through the opening. "Unfortunately, all this damage tells me that the inertial dampeners failed."

"Like the ones on our Vipers?" the blonde pilot asked.

"Fighters have inertial compensators. They provide a sort of cancellation pulse when you hit your turbos, or execute some crazy maneuver," Sinon crawled through the opening very, very carefully. "Dampeners are the same but different. Larger ships have them to cancel out bigger impacts..."

"Like Cylons ramming the landing bay," Apollo concluded. "It would take a pretty big blast to knock them out, wouldn't it?"

"A tylium explosion big enough to vaporize a whole landing bay might do it." He panned his light around. "But if the dampeners failed, it would kill everyone aboard in an instant." There was a rubbing sound from the other side of the hole. "Uh-oh."

Apollo knelt and stuck his head through the hole. "What?"

"You'll should come in and see."

"Hey," Starbuck reached out, but Apollo was already moving. He looked over to the tense-faced Chira. "Did that sound like a set up to you?"

"Don't be stupid."

"Starbuck?" Apollo's voice called from the other side of the debris.

"Yeah?"

"Keep your eyes open. We've found some fresh blaster scoring in here."

"What?" He looked at the woman again. Without a signal, they both began making their way to the opening.

Apollo squeezed the switch on his headset. "Boomer. Boomer, do you read me?"

"****lo? Sa* ***in?" The hiss and pop through the headphones made it nearly impossible to recognize the warriors voice.

"Boomer, do you read?"

"Apo***?"

"Rescue Shuttle, do you read me?" Apollo shouted into his microphone. "Anyone read me?"

"Loud and clear, captain," Tyche replied. "What's wrong?"

"We've found signs of a struggle," Apollo announced. "Since we're out of communication, Lieutenant Boomer has command of the mission. If we're not out of here in two centars, all of you are to leave the wreck and head back to Galactica. Do you understand?"

"Wait, he wants them to leave us?" Chira demanded nervously.

"No, no," One of the other warriors put his hands on the older woman's shoulders to calm her. "We've got some time. You know we can't stay in this universe for too long."

"But he just said..."

"It's standard procedure," Starbuck looked back. "The order had to be given. We'll be out of here long before time's up." He gestured towards the hole. Chira gave him a wide eyed, incredulous look. "What? You want to go last?"

Something clattered outside. The woman ducked into the opening and crawled as fast as caution would allow. Starbuck's hand fell on his pistol. Suddenly being the last one through didn't seem like such a good idea.

BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG

"But what would he be shooting at?" Chira's voice echoed oddly in the empty corridor.

"Shh," Apollo hissed. When he spoke again, he did so quietly. "I don't know, but I suspect pirates."

"Pirates?" she had the sense to whisper back.

"Why not?" Apollo asked. He looked back for a second to give the older woman a confident little smile. "Think what a perfect base this place would be. This is a huge wreck, with a debris field and a hangar to hide in..."

"Yeah, they could raid illegal salvagers..." Starbuck felt a smile slip across his face for the first time since this whole fiasco began. There was nothing creepy about pirates. Nothing at all.

Apollo nodded. "Outside there's a buoy warning everyone about a class nine hazard, so no one wants to come here. We've found no real radiation and no sign of dangerous munitions..."

His reassurances kept them going through another yawning hatch and into the corridor beyond. One of the other warriors, Dares, moved slightly ahead, though whether he was looking just for their missing pilot, or trying to forestall some hidden ambush, he didn't say. It wasn't long before he stopped at a three way intersection.

"More blaster marks here," Dares' harsh whisper carried back to the group easily.

When the group gathered around the warrior, both Apollo and Starbuck began to play their lights around. Apollo's quickly fell on another scored patch just a little further down the way, but it was Starbuck's light that found a group spattering one wall.

"Hey, guys? Over here." The blonde warrior stood near a patch of wall that bore three, large black stains in a tight group. Next to one was a dark, stinking spatter.

"Blow-through," Chira said as she bent to examine the marks more closely. "Whatever got hit here was biological." She pointed at the pattern on the wall. "As you can see, the power hadn't completely dissipated. It hit meat, vaporized part of it, the rest superheated and exploded onto the wall."

"Could someone live through that?" Apollo asked.

"Highly doubtful," Chira stood straight, reflexively wiping her hands on her tan skirt. "Our weapons are made to kill Cylons with one hit. The human body isn't made to take that kind of punishment."

"So where's the body?" Starbuck asked. He panned his light around the floor. "There's no stain on the floor, or marks where his friends carried him off."

"Nevermind that," Starbuck backed away from the wall, flashing his light around. "Check this out." He stopped his light in several more locations on the corridor wall. Each time he stopped on a blast mark.

"That's a lot of firing," the other warrior said.

"Yeah. A lot." Apollo agreed.

"Why would he fire so many shots?" Sinon asked.

"I don't know," Apollo replied. "Warriors are trained marksmen. He shouldn't have been waving his blaster around like a hose pipe."

"This is making me think we should find Bojay," Starbuck frowned. "Now."

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One of their wandering pools of light stopped on a human hand. Once it did, it didn't move again. "Oh felgercarb," Sinon whispered.

The group closed in a circle around the limb. All six lights focused on the same spot. Chira poked it with the tip of her service boot.

"Starbuck, take Dares and keep watch ahead," Apollo commanded. He looked to the older woman, "Chira, is that Bojay's hand?"

The pair stepped away, further up the corridor they'd been following. A sound just behind them made both men's hands fall to their blasters. Sinon raised his hands defensively.

"It's just me." Sinon held his hands out.

"Sorry," Dares had the good grace to sound embarrassed.

"If we keep going this way we'll be in the main part of the ship," Starbuck told the tech. "Crew decks."

"Why would he go there?" Sinon asked.

"Don't know. There's no point to it," the blonde warrior replied. "On a dead ship, there should be no supplies. Food should be corrupted, water pumps aren't functioning. There wouldn't be much he could use." He panned the light around again. "Did you hear that?"

"No." Sinon blinked out nervously into the dark. "Hey, shine your light out there again, at that support." The pool of light licked out again, stopping when the tech signaled. "There. See it?"

The pair advanced into the dark, closing on the support. Starbuck's pool of light tightened on a peculiar red smear.

"Bloodstain," Starbuck said.

"It's a hand-print. Sort of," Sinon observed. He reached up, comparing. "Left hand."

"Hey, Apollo?" Starbuck called back. He turned back to where his friend and the med-tech crouched over the limb. "Which hand is that?"

"Left, why?"

"It's not Bojay's," Starbuck replied. "Not unless he grabbed the support up here, chopped it off and threw it back there."

"It wouldn't be anyway," Chira said. She pointed to the nails. "Decoration. Unless Lieutenant Bojay painted his nails..."

"Hey," the warrior at the back called out towards a quickly moving shape. "Bojay?" He took several rapid steps back the way they had come before looking back. "I think I just saw Bojay. He's behind us." The man broke into a jog.

"Hektor, wait," Darius called back. He glanced at Starbuck for permission to go back.

"Hektor," Apollo's voice echoed as he rose. It was already too late by the time he'd started moving. The large framed warrior had already stepped around a corner. "Don't leave the group."

"It's okay," the voice called back. "He's just up here."

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The big man's pool of light wobbled as he jogged down the corridor towards the smudge leaning against a support member. A big grin split the warrior's face. Soon he'd be out of this hell-hole and he couldn't wait.

"Bojay, quit fracking around," Hektor called out. "We've been hunting for you for almost a centar. Let's get out of here."

Hektor suddenly stopped cold. Something was off. Even if the Colonial Warrior ahead of him had picked up every speck of ash and filth he could have in the machine-shop, his uniform wouldn't show blue.

"Captain, there's something weird going on here," the big man called back as he slowed his step. He glanced back just as Apollo turned the corner. "There's a guy up here, but I think he has a head injury. We may need that med-tech."

Hektor returned his eyes to the figure who was now leaning against a strut. For an instant he wondered if the high magnetic field could make him see things. A normal human should have been... wider.

The figure turned and the horror of it shut Hektor's brain down. His hand fell to the butt of his blaster more out of reflex than design. The warriors' face was lop-sided, as if half his head had been crushed. Even his shoulder and chest seemed compressed somehow. The corpse's good eye was weird. Cold. Glassy.

Sinon's voice seemed to whisper through the big man's bones. _"But if the dampeners failed, it would kill everyone aboard in an instant."_

The dead warrior rushed forward at a weird, rolling gallop. He wasn't fast enough to get to the big man before Hektor's blaster came up, shrieking energy into the dark. The dead man spun into the nearest wall as the energy bolt hit his torso and explosively converted a fist sized chunk of uniform, skin and bone beneath into carbon and stinking vapor. It barely slowed him at all.

"Hektor?" Apollo's voice rang down the corridor.

The big man managed a second shot, the muzzle of his pistol less than a meter from its target. Flame bloomed in the corpse's breast bone just before it slammed the big warrior, taking both of them down in a struggling pile.

Apollo froze. His white handlight played across shrieking Hektor. A blaster flared again and again between the two frantic shapes writhing on the deck. A sudden gout of burnt guts splashed hard on the ceiling as a bolt finally punched through. Hektor's sudden scream was pinched off as the once man tore into his throat with broken teeth.

Something moving in the darkness beyond pulled Apollo's light away from the horror show. There, in the unexpectedly trembling white, a large group of other figures strode hurriedly, clumsily forward. Most were whole, but all were obviously dead. They brought with them the stench of rot, or burnt meat and hair and the noise of hungry, animal moans.

The warrior's pistol leapt into his hand, but they ignored him to fall on Hektor's body, burying it in tearing fingers and teeth. The only thing that kept him from firing was that somehow none of them had noticed him yet.

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Chira and Sinon bolted towards Starbuck, colliding with Dares, who was already running for Apollo. The young warrior's blaster had leapt to his hand at the first sound of gunfire, but the screams sent him charging.

"Apollo!" he shouted.

Apollo didn't move. He stood paralyzed, with his weapon loosely pointed down the corridor. There was already a sheen of fear-sweat drenching his olive skin.

"Apollo, what's going on?"

"*s a*yone on thi* fre*ency?" the voice in his headset made Starbuck blink.

"Hello?" Starbuck stumbled, pushing the receiver tighter against his ear. Chira damn near knocked him over as she passed. "Hello? Who's out there?"

"Ident**y yours**f." The voice was female. He could tell that much.

Starbuck looked up in time to see Apollo grab Dares by his shoulders and all but throw him back up the corridor. "Run!" The brave flight-captain was gone. Only terror remained. "Fracking RUN!"

Apollo tried to grab Chira's sleeve with his blaster laden hand and jerk her along as he ran. "But what about Hektor?" the woman gabbled as she looked back.

"He's dead." Apollo's wide, panicked eyes swept the three just ahead of him. "Run! They're coming!"

Starbuck couldn't pay attention to the voice mumbling in his ear anymore, not when he saw what his handlight splashed against. Their uniforms were bloodied and burnt. Many of their faces were piecemeal patches of flesh, bone, or something black and crusty. His mind shut down, but his reflexes responded. Chira screamed and Starbuck's pistol began firing down the corridor.

The sound of blaster-fire tripped something inside Apollo's mind. He reached the small, fearful group and managed to pause. Then his own blaster came up and he started jerking the trigger frantically, strobing energy into the darkness.

Blue/white blooms exploded across the mass of bodies. Some staggered, but their unexpected judder brought on a surge. They began to charge.

"RUN!" Apollo shouted again. He pushed Starbuck with his handlight as he threw three last shots down the corridor.

No one needed to be told again. Dares bolted first, unfired pistol in his fist, pelting down the corridor as if he were on fire. Sinon was next, with Chira running a very close third. The bobbing blobs of their handlights made the surrounding darkness chaotic, confusing. Even so, Dares saw their salvation just ahead.

"Blast door!" he shouted back.

Neither Starbuck nor Apollo really heard him. They were terrified, barely slowing as they glanced back to throw wild shots into the shadowed horde. All they knew when they looked ahead was that suddenly their people were laboring to pull an armored door closed with their bare hands. The gap was already small and it was still shrinking.

Apollo fought hard not to chip a shot into the door, to let them know that he was still alive. He fought his terror again to shove Starbuck through. He wormed through screaming as half imagined hands reached out to jerk him back into the dark.

"Shoot, fracking shoot," Sinon shouted as he threw his pack down.

"The hatch isn't closed yet," Dares shouted back.

"That's why you should shoot!" Sinon barked over his shoulder as he dug.

Three blaster muzzles went into a gap only slightly bigger than they were. There was no aiming. Harsh, bright flashes strobed into the dark showing the hideous mass getting closer and closer.

"Fire in the hole," Sinon shouted and a bright, wheat yellow light exploded from the track inside the door.

"Frack!" Starbuck shouted, shielding his eyes a second too late. The sudden heavy thump of meat against the door made him leap back. Blinded, he tripped over someone else. they both fell.

Sinon's wail was an agony to hear.

"Go, go, go," Apollo holstered his pistol, knowing somehow that the pounding on the metal was a good thing. He reached down and grabbed the first person he felt, jerking them up.

A slender hand reached through and grabbed his pistol belt, but someone was already moving to help him. Apollo felt his body jerk again as the arm was hit or kicked once, twice, three times. Starbuck grabbed his flailing arm and pulled hard. As bones crunched beneath heavy, panicked boots, the hand lost much of its strength and he could finally pull away.

The group pounded down the corridor until they reached another armored door. Ancient disaster had also been left partially open. Within seconds the group had pulled it to within a finger's breadth of being closed. There was no sound of pursuit.

"Okay, cover your eyes this time," Sinon growled hoarsely.

This time everyone had time to notice the bloom of heat accompanying the long burning flash. Chira had shucked her own pack during the pause and was digging out something.

"Welding patch," Sinon panted. "That hatch ain't moving."

"That what you did back there?" Apollo asked.

Sinon nodded wordlessly as the woman sprayed something across his fried skin. Instantly his breathing smoothed and lost its half disguised whimper. There was another hiss as she sprayed something else.

"Rescue shuttle one," Starbuck's voice was a fearful noise in the background; "do you read?"

"We've got to keep moving," Apollo looked over at the pale faces of most of his group. "We've got to get back to the shuttle as fast as we can."

"What about Bojay?" Dares slumped against one of the navy-brown walls. "Are we just going to leave him?"

"You saw those things," Chira's voice grew thick as the wave of terror returned. "If they found us, they found him. He's gone."

"Frak that," Dares made to stand up. "We just lost Hektor. I'm..."

"She's right," Apollo looked over at the warrior. "As little as I like it, we've got to realize that he's probably..." an image of toothy slaughter swam before his eyes, "...he's probably dead."

"But this is a rescue mission..." Dares began.

"Listen, I've already lost one man, I'm not losing four more." His eyes flicked up to his best friend. Starbuck had frozen, wide-eyed. "Starbuck?"

"Apollo?" the younger warrior looked over, shock and fear coloring his features. "Set your headset for unicom."

**I don't remember if I've said this before, the 'BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG' thing is for scene and _point of view_ changes. It alse lets me pass time, for a few minutes without going into too much detail. Yes, I know it's not really a tool that most professionals use, but hey, this ain't the Big Time. Usually if I have a day pass, or I like to drop a cliff hanger, I'll end the chapter.**

**Anys, thanx for reading. Please review. It really does make me work.**


	10. Chapter 10

_BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT - PART 2_

DISCLAIMER: See previous. Seriously. If you've gotten this far you know I have nothing, I'm making nothing and I own nothing. Nothing's changed.

**A/N: Well that was a long weekend, huh? It seems that I am, to quote Billy Shake, fortune's fool. Karma has apparently decided to make up for the rest of the year with the last few months and I have been... discommoded lately. Had to get a hot water heater, washer/dryer, fix everywhere that they went, then the car needed stuff, then the rest of the house, plumber, water pressure, blah, blah, blah, ad inifinitum. I FINALLY got that other chapter done for YOTS, and uploaded, but it was a pain. I have also JUST finished editing the previous installments of this one. (There were some dropped words and misspellings, and I gave the flow a tweak. Nothing major, so you don't need to re-read). After this, it's time for breffie.**

**My next installment may be a bit (though hopefully much shorter than the last one), because I have to start raw writing. As I said before, I had most of this written, so putting it here was mostly editing and cut/paste. After this chap I want to head back to the Battlestar to get their take on things, so it'll be yet another chapter before I get to play my little trick on Starbuck. Don't get too excited about that, it's just a little poke, but I've mentioned it before and I wanted to give you all an update. _I_ think it's funny.**

**Now for the gunfight/rescue. Cue the title music.**

Chapter 2

Chira threw up. Adrenaline, terror, the stink of burnt rot, anything could have set her off. Starbuck had felt the desire since he got onto this cursed bucket, but he hadn't done it. He was kind of jealous.

"...e can only reach you if we know where you are," the voice said firmly.

Apollo stared confusedly at Starbuck. The younger man closed his fist over his microphone.

"I know, it's impossible, but that sounds like Sheba," His whisper was clipped. Tense.

"Identify yourself," Apollo commanded sternly.

"This is Major Sheba of the Warstar Elysium and you don't have time to frak with me," the woman's voice was equally harsh. "You need to tell me exactly where you are so I can tell you how to get out of the trouble you're in. The lemmies know this ship and they're going to be up your ass any micron, so you need to move. Now."

"This is some kind of trick..." Apollo began.

Her tone was perfect 'angry Sheba'. "Fine, I'll just let you get torn apart and eaten then. So sorry to have bothered you. Remember to lead with your throat..."

Apollo felt his stomach drop out. "Wait! Wait," he called fearfully out into the dark. His handlight panned across the door, looking for the location tag that should have been in the center. "I can't find the..."

Sinon's light hit the tab above the hatch.

"I'm at hatchway 4-126-3-H," Apollo announced. He waited. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," Sheba's voice replied tersely. "Can you tell which way is forward?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, you need to get to hatchway 4-120-3-H. Take it. Close it. Go to the next intersection and hang a left..."

"That takes me into the warrior's dorms," Apollo replied.

"That's right. Don't worry about lemmies. There may be a few, but the warriors had all launched when Laurentia died, so except for some stragglers, you shouldn't have anything to worry about," the voice returned. "We'll probably take out the few there anyway. We're moving towards you now."

"Hey, I don't know if you noticed," Starbuck broke in angrily, "but those things don't die."

"Starbuck?" she gasped. "But how are you..?"

"That's because they're already dead, genius." A male voice bit sarcastically.

Then what he said sank in and the frightened warriors goggled at each other as Sheba's voice continued. "The human skull is a sensor pod. If you want them to stop, you shoot them in the head. No sensors and they're useless. No point in animating them."

"You say that like we're supposed to know," Apollo added his annoyance to the conversation.

"Every first orbit cadet knows," the voice returned in an edgy, somehow curious tone. "So does every pirate, free pilot or freighter bum. Who are you?"

"I'm Flight Captain Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica."

There was a long pause.

"Oh, I'm definitely looking forward to meeting you people now," the woman's voice held a purr of menace.

"That didn't sound good," Starbuck murmured.

"Your choice," Sheba fired back mercilessly. "Wait for the lemmies to tear you apart, or come to me. At least you know that I'll talk to you instead of eating your face off." She paused for a moment before continuing in a slightly softer tone. "I wouldn't try to make it back to your shuttle either. You people came in with everything but the squadron band playing. It's probably been overrun. You should consider it gone."

Apollo switched his mic off. "Lovely." He looked back at the door, then at the others. "You all caught that?"

"Yeah, but it's not possible," Chira said, still wiping bile from her mouth. "Sheba's in the med bay aboard the Galactica."

"I know," Apollo nodded.

"And warstars?" Dares demanded. "What in Dis is a warstar?"

"It was supposed to be the next step up from a battlestar. My father once told me about them." Apollo jerked his head to the others to begin moving. "They'd been on the drawing board for a long time, but when rumors of peace with the Cylons started circulating, they stopped working on them."

"Looks like somebody didn't," Starbuck said.

"Doesn't matter," Apollo returned with a note of finality. "We're trapped and the only help we've gotten so far is from someone who can't possibly be here. Now let's go before those... things find a way around our little barricade."

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Starbuck was getting a case of the creeping horrors. He still felt those things watching him through the alloy walls. Need and caution sent him the down the marching line, to share rearguard with Dares. After all, the only thing between the tail end of this little group and the monsters he'd seen was two little doors and a whole lot of shadowy nothing. Their handlights never showed anything, but they both felt something back there, but the only sounds they caught were Chira's half muffled sobs and the scrape of their boots on the deck sole. They didn't talk and all that silence gave the young lieutenant's mind time to work. Both men looked back frequently.

Whatever else happened, he did _not_ want to think about Sheba's voice coming over their headsets. Nor did he want to think about those things behind in any capacity other than as targets. More than once he'd caught himself thinking about what, no, _who_ they'd once been... and then he'd chop that line right off. Instead he concentrated on the threat aspect. It was safer to think of them as some sort of alien than... what the flickering lights had shown him. Chills clung to his skin like sweat. If those _aliens_ knew the layout of the ship, then they'd know how to get around the barricade. His gaze began to dart back to front.

'_If they know the corridors, then the next way through is...'_ Starbuck's eyes widened and he rushed quickly forward, startling Dares.

"Hey," the blonde's whisper halted Apollo. "I just thought of something."

"What?" Apollo's voice was abnormally harsh.

"Keep it down," Starbuck cautioned. He looked up the passage and back. "If those things know this ship, then the next place they can catch us is up ahead..."

"...At frame 120," Apollo finished. He flashed his light to the darkness ahead.

"Exactly," Starbuck replied. "If this place is laid out like home, then there's a four way intersection ahead of that hatch."

"And you think it's a trap," Apollo nodded.

"It could be. Think about it," the younger man licked his lips nervously. "We know Sheba's in the med bay, but whatever is out here wanted us to go this way. She also told us to..."

"...Forget about the shuttle," Apollo nodded. He flashed his light back, half to check the blackness behind them, half to make sure everyone was still there. "Sinon, can you burn through those welds you made?"

"I could," the man began nervously, "but why would I want to? Those things are back there."

"They might not be."

Starbuck didn't think before he spoke. As usual. Sinon got what he meant at once. The tech's eyes got wide. He opened his mouth to say something, but never got the chance. Blasters began to scream from the dark up somewhere up ahead.

Apollo's reflexes betrayed him. "Sheba?" His hand strayed up to the tiny switches on his headset to make sure he was transmitting. "Sheba, are you there?"

"Yeah, we're here, _Apollo_," the woman snarled above the noise of combat. "Good job. Tell Creel you got us good, you gall-mogging snitrad." There was a break as more blaster fire shrieked into the darkness. "Well, we're not going down without a fight. Tell your boss he's gonna need more toys, 'cause we're wrecking these."

"That didn't sound fake," Starbuck said.

The two men shared a glance and began bolting up the corridor towards the sound of gunfire. Apollo paused as his friend ran on.

"Dares, keep an eye on these two. We'll let you know what's going on." The Apollo spun and with a bob of his light, was gone.

It took seconds to reach the next hatch and pass through. Starbuck had already tucked himself up into the cubby of a support beam and was winging shots up the corridor. Apollo shivered as he watched another corpse go down.

Starbuck gave him a ferocious smile. "She was right. Hit 'em in the head and they go down." He turned back, flashing off a shot as something once human bolted across the intersection. Downrange the head popped in a blast of steaming gore. "It's just like target practice," he said gleefully. His next shot missed, staining some distant something with carbon.

Part of Apollo knew he should be horrified at the hunger on his best friend's face, but that wasn't the part in charge now. He stepped quickly across to the other support member, cuddled up in the angle and clipped off a shot. On cue, one of the damaged skulls exploded. Relief surged with the adrenaline in his veins. Apollo barked out a laugh and shot again.

It took a few moments to realize that things were not working out quite right. For one thing, there were a _lot_ of those things making it all the way across. For another, some of them had noticed the bolts flashing up their flank. Starbuck put the next one down as it had rounded the corner. Apollo had gotten another, but the next dropped a pace into their hallway. The one after that had just fallen two paces closer.

"There are too many of them," Starbuck said. His next shot exploded on the hatch combing, but Apollo's hit.

The headset jabbered, and Apollo ducked back. "Say again all last!" he instructed.

"TDX, TDX, TDX," Sheba shouted. "Drop! Drop now!"

"Hit the deck!" Apollo hoped his shout reached all the way back to Dares and crew. "Starbuck..!"

The blonde man dropped just as a blinding white blade of energy slashed through the metal above his shoulders. Apollo blinked and shook his head. New terror seized him in a jagged fist. Every sense was malfunctioning; vision; gone, hearing; blown. He could hear Starbuck saying something, but the noise was distant, indistinct as if he were under water. The only thing he could smell was the all-encompassing stink of burnt alloy. Even his sense of touch only was selectively working. His face felt sunburned, but everything covered, or away from whatever that blast seemed to be working well enough.

"Starbuck!" Apollo shouted. "Starbuck. Get Dares up here. He needs to take my place in case there are more of them."

Something grabbed him and the blind warrior raised his pistol, hoping he wasn't about to fire on his best friend. The weapon was shoved away as Starbuck's voice mumbled something. There were light pats on his chest and a hand seized the burn on his face, as if someone were checking his eyes. There were pats on his shoulders. The monsters wouldn't do that, would they?

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Starbuck knelt beside Apollo, shouting for Chira. From the way his friend was staring around, he had to be blind. An impact against his side made him jump. The med tech was saying something, but he couldn't make out anything but a huge ringing noise. He looked away as she was still speaking.

"Dares, get over here," he gestured hurriedly as he shot a glance back up the corridor. "There might be more of them coming. We have to hold them off."

Dares mumbled something back. When it was clear Starbuck couldn't understand him, he pointed.

Starbuck's pistol followed his gaze. Other figures were crossing in front of the opening now. These were different. They wore armored vacc suits, carried pulse rifles and were going the other way. Carefully. Their motions were fluid, not the hurried, half coordinated herky-jerks of the aliens. Occasionally there was a flash as someone shot something. Somehow, the sight of them made him feel better. So far the aliens hadn't carried tools, or used weapons.

His confidence ebbed when three more suited figures stepped around the corner, two pointing their rifles his way. For the merest instant he was tempted to fire, but there wouldn't have been any point. There were more of them and they had bigger guns.

"Hold it," Starbuck raised his hands as he climbed to his feet. "We're not monsters." The figures approached as the young lieutenant carefully holstered his pistol. "We're no threat to you. See?"

The rearmost figure stepped angrily forward, gloved hand shoving back the blast visor on its helmet. Sheba glared at Starbuck and spoke, gesturing towards Apollo and Chira.

"Easy, easy," Starbuck held his hands up placatingly. "I can't hear you. Whatever that blast was... My ears are ringing too loud." He turned and gestured over to their single undamaged warrior. "Dares, come over here."

It took several short moments to get the point across, but the still obscured troopers gesturing with their pulse rifles hadn't hurt the effort at all. Very, very soon, Sheba and her people had gotten Apollo to his feet. Chira and Sinon had the duty of moving him so that he didn't walk into walls, or trip. The last was a real hazard as the group loped into the battle area.

One of Sheba's conditions was that the handlights be put out. The lamps the rescue party used were red. It made sense to Starbuck. They wouldn't kill night-vision the way their own handlights had, though the glare didn't seem to penetrate as far. Still, as they picked hurriedly through the corpse strewn corridor, he wished for another color to light their way.

Sheba's people were moving like they had a purpose. Two of the six had already moved relatively far ahead, rifles ready and looking for something else to blast. The Major had stayed back with the small group of refugees, looking back often, her expression alternating between hostile/neutral and just plain annoyed. Whenever she had to say something, she addressed Dares, or the techs. Starbuck got no words, only hard looks. The remainder of Sheba's team followed the small band of refugees. No one had any illusions about their real purpose. Oh sure, they were back there to keep something from coming up on them in the dark, but the blonde warrior knew they were also there just in case someone from the Galactica got stupid. Starbuck had no doubt that if he went for his pistol, his end would be spectacular. And short-lived.

Within a few minutes, they'd been led into the bachelor warriors' dorms. A fat, purplish flash or three made everyone freeze nervously, but the pause was short and the group was moving again within seconds. It wasn't long before they saw their destination. Sheba moved up to the wide, black opening of this ship's old hangar tram. Her two scouts had already gone inside. Starbuck and the others paused outside.

"You can't be serious," the blonde officer said. "What if something turns the tram on?"

The brown haired woman said something that Starbuck still couldn't catch and pointed more forcefully into the opening. When the man didn't move, she pointed again and a hard shove from a pulse rifle made the message clear. The young man looked back, halfway ready to fight, but a flicker of movement from the woman in front caught his eye. When he looked back, his universe shrank to the blaster muzzle centered on his nose. She pointed again.

Starbuck gulped, nodded and let himself be herded into the long shaft. The bobbing reds not too far ahead left him feeling as though he were hiking to Hades. The pitiful twinkle ahead and glare behind left huge clouds of shadows that jostled and clung. It took him a few moments to realize that he was starting to actually hear the rattle of their boots on the metal catwalk.

Back in the real world, the tram ride was very, very short. Actually walking the tracks seemed to take forever. He'd all but given up on seeing real light again when they reached the end of the shaft and emerged into the forward section of the hangar bay. Starbuck wanted to pause, savoring the feeling of open space again, but Faux Sheba kept the pressure on, not letting anyone slow. She kept looking back, occasionally barking something the group helping Apollo along. They rounded a large, jagged berg of wreckage and Starbuck froze.

The sight of their shuttle stopped nearly everyone. While the beast squatting on the ashes was similar enough to fleet basic for anyone to recognize its design, this one could never be mistaken for the one they'd left behind. This one wasn't just some slow, fat-bellied personnel carrier. Scattered here and there over the hull were several new, blunt-nosed sponsons, but the things that really captured everyone's attention were the glass globes of turrets someone had mounted just ahead of the thrust units. The one on top was pointed forward, out into the gulf of space, but the one on the bottom was pointed right at them.

"Holy frak," Starbuck breathed. Whatever he was about to say next was drowned out by the same exclamation from Sheba. They were the first words to penetrate the ringing in his ears.

"Holy frak," her eyes narrowed angrily as they darted around the bay. "Run to the shuttle. GO, GO, GO!"

Starbuck took only an instant to look around before he whirled on his little group. Here and there, scattered like faint twinkling stars, the yellow depressurization warning strobes were starting to blink.

"Run!" he shouted to the others. "They're going to blow the bay!"

There had been several others, also in suits, outside the armed shuttlecraft. They had obviously been waiting for the group to come jogging out of the dark. When faux-Sheba started the stampede, two knelt and raised heavy rifles to their shoulders. Another ducked into the shuttle and bolted up the stairs.

As the group charged the fat bellied ship, Starbuck noticed a gauze thin dome of purple haze surrounding its hull. He shot Major Sheba a wide-eyed, questioning look. She just jerked her chin towards the space-suited figure just ahead of their little group. He/she wasn't slowing down at all. In fact, it passed through the field and bolted on through the open hatchway.

"Keep going," Sheba's voice was muffled both by the plexi covering her face and the sound of large pulse-turbines winding up. "Get inside. Licas will get you seated. Hurry up. GO!

The little group loped along wearily, but the thought of choking to death in vacuum kept them moving. Apollo was sent pounding into the shuttle first, bouncing clumsily into the tight corner and up the stairs to the main deck. When Starbuck finally managed to crowd inside, there was barely an instant to notice how similar the interior was to the shuttles from home, before he was shoved down into a seat on the outside wall. Sheba fled forward as Apollo was buckled down by the first suit in. By the time Starbuck realized what was going on, it was too late. His wrists were bound together and his pistol was gone.

No one was given any time to ask questions. As soon as Dares was strapped down, one of the space-suited warriors came by with a roll of cargo tape. Everyone got some.

"This is Corpse Fly. We have cargo," the announcement was loud and clear through the crew area.

Regular gravity returned as someone closed the shuttle's outer hatch. Starbuck hadn't known how much he was missing it until it came back.

He looked around nervously. Sinon, Dares and Chira looked as terrified as he felt. Apollo's eyes were wide and staring around. Two of the... ten, maybe..? Space suited figures sat down in front of their prisoners and began strapping themselves down. Through the ports on the other side of the ship, Starbuck saw thin shrouds of air whipping by, headed for the green deeps beyond the hangar.

"Send the destruct signal," Sheba commanded as she strode towards the odd, four seat cockpit. "I don't want the lyche to figure out how our XE filters work."

"Right boss."

The shuttle lifted and began slipping slowly out of the bay. At the back of the line of seats Chira began shuddering and weeping into her gag.

"Hey," one of the guards called out, "this one's crying..."

"Dopplers are clever," Sheba called back. "You know that. Keep an eye on them. If they move, blast their heads off."

"Yeah, don't take any chances," the guard in front of Apollo gave him a meaningful stare as he spoke. "If someone or something has to die here, make sure it's them, not you."

The captured warriors looked around as they felt the shuttle jag abruptly. Faux Sheba was putting the fat bodied machine through paces they'd never have imagined trying in one of theirs. She'd pulled hard, putting the beast in an abrupt, spinning climb. If the younger man hadn't been kept silent by the tape, he would probably have been rendered silent as the woman at the front of the bus rolled them two hundred and seventy degrees, all the while turning smoothly onto an outward bound course to starboard.

"Here we go," she announced. "Going active. Licas, Vyra, get those guns online. Creel might not have sent all his spooks after that shuttle."

"I've got combat chatter and energy sources about three light centons to starboard," one of the crew called out. Instantly there was a secondary sound of turbines winding up. The ship buffeted slightly once.

"Incoming," a new voice announced. "Two spooks. Low, neg forty. One at sixty three degrees, one at one hundred."

"Roger that. Two," Sheba repeated.

"I'll take the one at a hundred first," a woman replied too calmly. "It's closer."

"Hey, Vyra, bet I kill 'em before you," the man named Licas taunted.

"Contact ahead. One more," the copilot announced. "Frak, he's close."

"Roger. We'll see about getting by him," Sheba replied.

"He's going to try ramming," the copilot said.

"Not an issue." Sheba's confidence was not catching among the prisoners.

The shuttle rolled over, turning and twisting in ways that it shouldn't have been able to. Whatever else their pilot was, she was skilled.

"One down," Vyra said calmly.

"Hah, smoked one," Licas crowed.

"Got our rammer," the woman said, seconds later. "Good flying, boss."

"Thank you." Sheba's tone was tight with concentration. "Anything else?"

"Negative," Licas reported glumly. "If there's anything out here they don't want to leave daddy."

"We've been too expensive for Commander Creel to play much more," Sheba nodded. "Bleep escort one, tell them they can fade back whenever they want. I think we're clear." Her announcement brought a quick burst of cheers from her people. Even laconic Vyra gave a chuckle and a clap. Their protracted noise prompted the woman to speak again. "Okay people, that doesn't mean it's time to break out the ambrosia. We've got six prisoners for fleetsec. We're also too close to Laurentia for comfort and you all know how smart Creel is. Eyes open. Start storing your gear and getting ready to go home, but don't be stupid."

At the words 'six prisoners', the blonde officer sagged back with relief. The sixth prisoner had to be Bojay. A sound of approaching boots pulled everyone's attention back to the front of the bay. Sheba was coming over.

"Sleep them," she ordered one of the guards. With a gesture she cleared the seat in front of the flight lieutenant. A quick jerk pulled the tape from his mouth before she sat. "You're supposed to be Starbuck." She looked at him with frosty eyes. "You made a mistake." She reached out and fingered the clusters of his rank. "Starbuck was a captain."

"I am Starbuck," he replied tersely. "What the frak are you up to? We haven't..."

"You've done nothing except impersonate an officer of the Colonial Fleet, ignore fleet marker buoys, fly into prohibited space and get the attention of a particularly nasty lyche," the woman's tone was envenomed steel. "Even if you're not a doppler or a rev, you put me and my crew at risk, as well as the wing of fighters hiding outside to give us cover. You've risked twenty lives, not counting your own."

She looked over to the end of the row. One of her people had put an air hypo to Chira's neck. There was a hiss and she slumped.

"Hm. Our drugs seem to work on you. Good."

"We're human beings just like you..." Starbuck returned angrily.

"You can't be." Sheba barked back. She took a breath and calmed. "You can't be."

"Look, I'm Lieutenant Starbuck of the Battlestar Galactica. That's Captain Apollo," he jerked his head at the man beside him. "He commands blue squadron. You know us." He stopped when he saw the denial in her eyes, took a breath and tried again. "Your name is Sheba. Your father was Commander Cain of the Pegasus. We all thought you were dead after the Siege of Molokai..."

"You're good, I'll give you that," Sheba's smile held no warmth. "Fine, _Lieutenant_ Starbuck, who's commander of the Galactica?"

"Commander Adama."

"When did you see him last?"

The blonde officer attempted a shrug. "Two, maybe three centars ago. Just before the mission to come here."

Again she bestowed a mirthless smile. "Commander Adama and the Battlestar Galactica were destroyed at the Scouring of Caprica. Oh, some of his people survived, but not many." Her eyes flicked to Starbuck just as the hypo hit his neck. "But you should know that _lieutenant_. You were one of the survivors. In fact, you were the commander of Griffon Squadron until eighteen sectars ago. That's when you died just over there." She nodded back towards the rapidly shrinking wreckage. "I also know for a fact that Captain Apollo died six sectars before that."

"That's not possible." Starbuck's mouth went dry.

"Oh, but it is." Sheba replied too calmly. Her hand lightninged out, seizing his hair in a brutal fist. "I saw Starbuck burn. As for Apollo? He died a hero. His Viper exploded just short of the Peace Fleet. His last act was to warn us that ten thousand Cylon Wraiths were on the way in. He gave us time to crash launch enough fighters to keep the Colonies alive." She shoved his head hard enough to bounce off of the glassteel window. "I don't know what you are, but I'm going to make it my personal mission to find out. And I will. Count on it."


End file.
